The famed “HP Garage,” as well as the adjoining two-story house and shed, were the birthplace of the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP), and of Silicon Valley as a center of high-tech innovation. William “Bill” Hewlett and David “Dave” Packard, who had both been students of Prof. Frederick Terman (later known as "The Father of Silicon Valley"), worked at the property between 1938 and 1940. The two men started out with $538 in working capital, including a used drill press that Packard had brought west with him. In their first major success, they sold eight units of a variable frequency oscillator they had developed to the Walt Disney Company, which needed them for the rollout of its animated classic, Fantasia. Today, HP is a Fortune 500 company with billions of dollars in annual revenues. The property at 367 Addison was the company’s headquarters until 1940, by which time the company had outgrown the original site and moved elsewhere. The property was registered as California Registered Landmark No. 976 in August 1987 and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.

Opened in 1990, the Museum of American Heritage is dedicated to displaying and teaching about the innovation and technological advancements made in America from 1750-1950. It focuses on inventions and technology that helped shaped America and in tracing the evolution of that technology and how it has influenced American society. It utilizes over 5,000 historical artifacts, from kitchen appliances to printing presses, in permanent and rotating exhibits to tell this story.

This was the site of Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation where engineer Robert Noyce explored the concept of using tiny wires to connect transistors within layers of silicon to create an integrated circuit that could be produced efficiently and on scale for commercial applications. Noyce built upon the work of others devising a silicon "chip" that held multiple circuit. The innovation led to the rise of the semiconductor electronics industry in the region. Today, integrated circuits are commonly referred to as "silicon chips" and found in nearly every electronic device.