Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 30

Introduced by Senator Hill

March 11, 2015

Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 30—Relative to the Frederick E. Terman Memorial Highway.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST

SCR 30, as introduced, Hill. Frederick E. Terman Memorial Highway.

This measure would designate a specified portion of State Highway Route 101 in the County of Santa Clara as the Frederick E. Terman Memorial Highway. The measure would also request the Department of Transportation to determine the cost of appropriate signs showing this special designation and, upon receiving donations from nonstate sources covering that cost, to erect those signs.

Fiscal committee: yes.

WHEREAS, Frederick E. Terman was one of the most successful
American administrators of science, engineering, and higher
education in the 20th century; and

WHEREAS, Terman was born on June 7, 1900, in English,
Indiana. Terman attended Stanford University, where he completed
his undergraduate degree in chemistry and his master’s degree in
electrical engineering; and

WHEREAS, Terman returned to Stanford in 1925 as a member
of the engineering faculty and for his first 12 years he was the only
faculty member teaching electronics (or radio engineering, as it
was called at the time). In 1932, Terman wrote and published a
textbook on Radio Engineering, which was one of the most
important books on electrical and radio engineering and remains
a good reference on these subjects; and

WHEREAS, Terman worked hard to bolster electrical
engineering and technology in California at a time when most
engineering job opportunities were on the East Coast. Terman was
elected president of the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1940, the
first person ever, west of Pittsburgh, to be elected; and

WHEREAS, During World War II, Terman directed a staff of
more than 850 at the Radio Research Laboratory at Harvard
University, an organization that was the source of various
technologies used to counter enemy radar during the war. These
countermeasures significantly reduced the effectiveness of
radar-directed anti-aircraft fire; and

WHEREAS, After the war, Terman returned to Stanford and
was appointed Dean of the School of Engineering. Terman made
the Stanford School of Engineering one of the best in the country.
By 1950, Stanford awarded as many electrical engineering Ph.D.
degrees as MIT, with a much smaller faculty. Terman laid the
foundations that would make Stanford one of the world’s
preeminent research universities from which many major Silicon
Valley corporations have been formed, including Hewlett Packard,
Cisco, Yahoo!, Rambus, Google, and VMWare; and

WHEREAS, Terman single-handedly created the university,
government, and private industry partnership model that still
characterizes Silicon Valley in the 21st century by creating the
Stanford Industrial Park, a revolutionary idea at the time, to
associate industry more closely with the university. Companies
such as Varian Associates, Hewlett Packard, Eastman Kodak,
General Electric, and Lockheed Corporation moved into Stanford
Industrial Park and turned the mid-Peninsula area into a hotbed of
innovation, which eventually became known as Silicon Valley.
Terman encouraged the licensing of Stanford inventions and the
establishing of faculty-consulting relations as a means of getting
Stanford ideas into the core of industry; and

WHEREAS, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were two of
Terman’s favorite engineering students, and certainly his most
successful protégés. Following his encouragement, they formed
Hewlett Packard. Years later, they left behind a Global Fortune
50 company that sells products around the world and multiple
multibillion dollar charitable foundations; and

WHEREAS, Frederick E. Terman passed away on December
19, 1982, in Palo Alto, California, at 82 years of age. In his
declining years, Terman reflected, “When we set out to create a
community of technical scholars in Silicon Valley, there wasn’t
much here and the rest of the world looked awfully big. Now a lot
of the rest of the world is here”; now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate of the State of California, the Assembly
thereof concurring, That the Legislature hereby designates the
portion of State Highway Route 101 from post mile 48.596, at
Shoreline Boulevard, to post mile 52.550, at the San Mateo County
line, in the County of Santa Clara, as the Frederick E. Terman
Memorial Highway; and be it further

Resolved, That the Department of Transportation is requested
to determine the cost of appropriate signs consistent with the
signing requirements for the state highway system showing this
special designation and, upon receiving donations from nonstate
sources sufficient to cover that cost, to erect those signs; and be it
further

Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate transmit copies of
this resolution to the Director of Transportation and to the author
for appropriate distribution.