By Russ Steele
“Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” is an often heard phrase. However, this statement implies that repeating history might be bad, whereas repeating the history of applied technology business development in Nevada County might be good for our struggling economy.
Recreating the glory days of innovation in Nevada County is the goal of many local political and economic leaders who promote “going green” to save the economy. They want to repeat the history of innovative business development in Nevada County in the 50s and 60s, by investing in green technology.
The question is, how viable is this strategy?
With the gold mines closing and the lumber industry in decline in the 1950s, the local economy was struggling, with many store fronts covered in fly spotted paper. The economic horizon was rather bleak, when Charles Litton Sr decided to move his Litton Engineering Laboratories from the Bay Area to Grass Valley.
Litton’s wife “Lu” suffered from allergies, which were not evident when she visited their summer home on Jackson Lake. Litton wanted to move out of the Bay Area into the foothills. He found the unfinished Memorial Hospital, on what we now know as Litton Hill, and bought the property which was falling into disrepair.
Much of the economic development in the late 1950s and 1960s in Western Nevada County can be traced to Litton’s arrival. He was a talented and creative engineer and had high hopes for the region. He invited like minded people to come to Nevada County to enjoy the beauty of the region, including Dr. Donald Hare, who started Grass Valley Group.
In Litton’s offer to buy the hospital, he expressed a desire to diversify the local mining and lumber economy. He thought Litton Engineering Laboratories would benefit the community and provide opportunities for young people to seek technical careers. In his August 1953 offer for the Memorial Hospital Litton wrote:
Missing in the current strategy is a green version of the Litton Engineering Laboratory that can serve as an incubator for the development of green technology. For the strategy to succeed, the County needs a green technology leader with the vision, the technical savvy, and the drive to succeed, that Litton brought to the community.
All the green technology initiatives that I am aware of in Nevada County are seeking government stimulus grants to get their green businesses off the ground. While government contracts were important in getting Litton’s microwave tube business started during WWII, he was more interested in moving beyond dealing with the Government. His glass blowing technology would be a vital to the manufacturing of fiber optic cables and he played a crucial, but relatively unknown, role in the development of silicon computer chips.
Back to the basic question. Where are the green technology visionary and business leaders in Nevada County? Where is the cutting edge green technology development that can create the must have green products of tomorrow?
I do not see any innovators only followers trying to do what others are doing. That does not mean they do not exist. Innovators often hide from potential competitors, waiting until they have proven technology to take to the market. This was true in the 1960s and 1970s, especially for the developers of video recorders, video games and integrated circuit chips.
Nevada County cannot recreate past economic development success by creating bio-fuel processing in plants, sustainable truck gardens, worm farms and energy saving retrofits. In the short term these activities can all create “green jobs,” but they are not the highly skilled jobs that lead to more innovations.
One bright spot on the horizon is Nevada City’s effort to secure Google’s ultrahigh speed Internet demonstration project. If Nevada City succeeds in securing this advance technology, innovators will flock to the community to take advantage of the technology and share in our foothill lifestyle. These broadband visionaries could create our next robust business sector.
However, if Google looks elsewhere, where will we find the green visionaries? Where will we find a green version of Charles Litton to provide an incubator for Nevada County’s next technology cluster? Lacking a visionary leader and a green technology incubator, the probability of repeating our past economic glory is slim to none.
Russ Steele is a freelance writer, who blogs at NC Media Watch. Quote is from Charles Vincent Litton papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
“Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” is an often heard phrase. However, this statement implies that repeating history might be bad, whereas repeating the history of applied technology business development in Nevada County might be good for our struggling economy.
Recreating the glory days of innovation in Nevada County is the goal of many local political and economic leaders who promote “going green” to save the economy. They want to repeat the history of innovative business development in Nevada County in the 50s and 60s, by investing in green technology.
The question is, how viable is this strategy?
With the gold mines closing and the lumber industry in decline in the 1950s, the local economy was struggling, with many store fronts covered in fly spotted paper. The economic horizon was rather bleak, when Charles Litton Sr decided to move his Litton Engineering Laboratories from the Bay Area to Grass Valley.
Litton’s wife “Lu” suffered from allergies, which were not evident when she visited their summer home on Jackson Lake. Litton wanted to move out of the Bay Area into the foothills. He found the unfinished Memorial Hospital, on what we now know as Litton Hill, and bought the property which was falling into disrepair.
Much of the economic development in the late 1950s and 1960s in Western Nevada County can be traced to Litton’s arrival. He was a talented and creative engineer and had high hopes for the region. He invited like minded people to come to Nevada County to enjoy the beauty of the region, including Dr. Donald Hare, who started Grass Valley Group.
In Litton’s offer to buy the hospital, he expressed a desire to diversify the local mining and lumber economy. He thought Litton Engineering Laboratories would benefit the community and provide opportunities for young people to seek technical careers. In his August 1953 offer for the Memorial Hospital Litton wrote:
“It has long been my opinion that communities such as Grass Valley and Nevada City could greatly benefit from more diversification of industrial endeavor. Most such communities cannot provide opportunity for their younger citizens who might like to engage in the trades or professionally in scientific and electrical fields, and providing such an industry at this time - if successful - might well lead to other complimentary light industries following suit, thus providing more opportunities than we alone could hope for.“Over the next 20 years, Charles Litton’s vision for economic diversity was realized. His facility on Litton Hill became the incubator for a world renowned cluster of applied technology business, with Grass Valley Group being the most widely recognized. Others were skunk works that did not want any public recognition, but produced leading edge technology based products, including video recorders, the Atari 2600 which is the mother to many cartridge based game players, and the first high speed modem chips.
Missing in the current strategy is a green version of the Litton Engineering Laboratory that can serve as an incubator for the development of green technology. For the strategy to succeed, the County needs a green technology leader with the vision, the technical savvy, and the drive to succeed, that Litton brought to the community.
All the green technology initiatives that I am aware of in Nevada County are seeking government stimulus grants to get their green businesses off the ground. While government contracts were important in getting Litton’s microwave tube business started during WWII, he was more interested in moving beyond dealing with the Government. His glass blowing technology would be a vital to the manufacturing of fiber optic cables and he played a crucial, but relatively unknown, role in the development of silicon computer chips.
Back to the basic question. Where are the green technology visionary and business leaders in Nevada County? Where is the cutting edge green technology development that can create the must have green products of tomorrow?
I do not see any innovators only followers trying to do what others are doing. That does not mean they do not exist. Innovators often hide from potential competitors, waiting until they have proven technology to take to the market. This was true in the 1960s and 1970s, especially for the developers of video recorders, video games and integrated circuit chips.
Nevada County cannot recreate past economic development success by creating bio-fuel processing in plants, sustainable truck gardens, worm farms and energy saving retrofits. In the short term these activities can all create “green jobs,” but they are not the highly skilled jobs that lead to more innovations.
One bright spot on the horizon is Nevada City’s effort to secure Google’s ultrahigh speed Internet demonstration project. If Nevada City succeeds in securing this advance technology, innovators will flock to the community to take advantage of the technology and share in our foothill lifestyle. These broadband visionaries could create our next robust business sector.
However, if Google looks elsewhere, where will we find the green visionaries? Where will we find a green version of Charles Litton to provide an incubator for Nevada County’s next technology cluster? Lacking a visionary leader and a green technology incubator, the probability of repeating our past economic glory is slim to none.
Russ Steele is a freelance writer, who blogs at NC Media Watch. Quote is from Charles Vincent Litton papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.