Many gathered at the Tech Museum of Innovation recently to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this iconic edifice.

I was honored to be a speaker with its first president, the trail blazer, Peter Giles, and  the energetic Tim Ritchie, the  second and current president. We celebrated and recalled the many phases from concept to dedication. In my comments, I mused that this was the greatest assemblage of creativity and entrepreneurship here since one afternoon when Bob Noyce had coffee with Bill Hewlett – alone.

In his comments, Giles asked me about the promise I had made in my 1983 state of the city in my first weeks as mayor and if I remembered the challenge I issued then.  With a bow to a famous movie, I recounted the words clearly:

“We will make this museum an offer they can’t refuse.”

This magical spot called Silicon Valley did not start here in San Jose and did not evolve here.  It possibly began in a garage on Addison Avenue in Palo Alto where two young engineering graduates began Hewlett-Packard, that vaunted, principled company. It also began our mythic creation story.

The Tech as it would become known was the idea of visionaries in the Junior League of Palo Alto. I believed with the partnership offer from our city we could forge the link to make it a reality.

It was daunting task.

Etched in its front wall today are the inspirational words of Bill Hewlett, David Packard, Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore. I often stop there now. They are an antidote to cynicism and laxity. This is the company of giants and the best of role models. This wall is our Mount Rushmore.

Moore’s quote there has always inspired me and brought a smile at the same time.  It is not his most famous, “Moore’s Law” on the changing power and cost of the microprocessor but another:

“If everything you try works, you are not trying hard enough.”

I love that quote for it expresses everything worthwhile about our venture, this Valley and indeed America. We tried, failed, then failed better. Then we succeeded.

After years and attempts and corrections, the Tech opened two decades ago on Chavez Plaza. And as the yellow school buses came and came carrying their precious cargo of boys and girls, young men and young women, you clearly see the future.  One hundred and thirty thousand students arrive each year  along with presidents and potentates and tourists. As they are inspired as they in turn inspire us.

The people of San Jose and the dedicated supporters made it happen. The chairs were all remembered that night:  Tony Ridder, Yvette del Prado, Frank Quattrone, Mike Hackworth, Ned Barnholt, Ann Bowers Noyce, and Chris DiGiorgio. Also Adobe’s John Warnock who weaponized technology to aid creativity in writing, publishing and film production was thanked. Jim Morgan of Applied Materials was saluted as the patron of the Tech for Global Good, and its work for the planet. The last speaker was our founding chair,  Ed Zschau, who said something that echoed through the galleries and I’ll paraphrase: My dream is that one day after a young woman receives the Nobel Prize for Physics or Medicine that she will thank her family, her teachers and then note that her first inspiration was her time as a girl at the Tech in San Jose that first sparked her interest.

Indeed, Silicon Valley did not start here nor did it have its first successes here.  But when you see the faces of the young people filled with wonder, the light in their eyes, you know that Silicon Valley at its best lives and breathes here in that Mango Dome on a plaza in Downtown San Jose.

Thirty-six years ago we made them an offer they did not refuse, and when I see those buses and those smiles, I know that it was a worthy one.

Tom McEnery is a former San Jose mayor.