Skip to main content

Techdrop

The Coin Flip That Didn't Build Silicon Valley (But Everyone Says It Did)

The Coin Flip That Didn’t Build Silicon Valley (But Everyone Says It Did)

You’ve probably heard the version where Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard flipped a coin to decide where to start their company, and that’s supposedly how Palo Alto became the birthplace of Silicon Valley instead of, say, the East Coast. It’s a great story. It’s also not what happened. Here’s the real sequence, and the version most people never hear.

The Day a Moth Rewrote the Dictionary

The Day a Moth Rewrote the Dictionary

Every developer alive types the word “bug” without thinking twice about it. It’s just what broken code is called. But the word has a body count of exactly one insect, a corpse taped to a logbook page, and a Navy officer who spent 45 years telling the story just slightly wrong. Here’s what actually happened.