Silicon Valley's nondescript garages and iconic companies they birthed

On a sunny Saturday morning, after a hearty breakfast of dosa, we decided to drive to the legendary Silicon Valley garages.

- Shweta Taneja

On a sunny Saturday morning, after a hearty breakfast of dosa, we decided to drive to the legendary Silicon Valley garages. We had heard a lot of these humble garages that had given birth to the most influential tech companies of the world. Our journey began with a handy pamphlet from a tourism non-profit of San Jose - a city which was the centre of the Silicon Valley innovation in chips manufacturing before San Francisco's software startups took over.

In a tree-lined avenue, we parked our car in front of 367 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto, which has been designated as the "Birthplace of Silicon Valley" and is a California Historic Landmark in 1989. The house is a Shingle Style home built in 1905 on a street peppered with similar houses. It feels like you've time travelled to a hundred years ago, where there were no computers or phones, where most of what the Silicon Valley was just orchards run by Hispanics.

In 1938, a newly married Dave Packard hired the one-car garage at the end of this house's driveway and began an electronics company with his classmate Bill Hewlett. Both had been encouraged by their professor, Dr Frederick Terman at the Stanford University, to start their own electronics company.