The Early Days
Started a half century ago, Santa Barbara’s original tech scene was quiet by design: Places like Delco and General Research set up shop near the airport in Goleta, working on top-secret defense projects for the government. That industry still thrives in whispered ways, with companies like Raytheon, Santa Barbara Focalplane (a division of Lockheed Martin), and Tecolote employing hundreds in various research and development capacities.
UCSB’s computer science program simultaneously got serious, thanks largely to the work of Glen Culler, who fostered the first tests for what would become the Internet. “He was way ahead of his time,” said longtime UCSB professor Dick Kemmerer, who recalled more than two dozen small companies, usually with three-letter names such as ACC, spinning out of UCSB in the 1970s and 1980s. “There were booms caused by people,” said Kemmerer, citing other former professors such as Virgil Elings, who built a vast fortune on microscope technology.