Silicon Hills: How Austin Became a Tech Capital

Austin bills itself as the Live Music Capital, but its other great modern reputation is written in silicon and startups. In a single lifetime the sleepy state-capital-and-college-town grew into 'Silicon Hills,' a rival to California's Silicon Valley — and the change didn't happen by accident. It ran through a defense-electronics firm that put down roots in 1955, a giant that came for typewriters in 1967, a national research consortium that chose Austin over California in a bidding war, a nineteen-year-old rebuilding computers in a dorm room, and a grocery store that started as a hippie co-op and became a global brand. This driving route connects the real, still-standing places where that story unfolded, from the near-east side up to Round Rock. It's less a company brochure than a map of how a whole city reinvented its economy — and why so many of the names you know today are stamped 'Austin, Texas.'