By Clyde Noel

Although he’s a longtime San Jose Rotary Club member, Leigh Weimers, the San Jose Mercury News’s famed man-about-town columnist, delighted the Los Altos Kiwanis Club last Tuesday with historical happenings in Silicon Valley.

Weimers started his easygoing chat with an admonition “to every male member in the audience, be sure to get your PSA test.” Thanks to a PSA blood test (prostate specific antigen), Weimers’ prostate cancer was diagnosed early. After a short time away from work for treatment, he returned Jan. 3.

“I’ve been with the San Jose Mercury since 1958 and writing a column for 34 years. When I returned to the paper in January, I was the happiest person at work,” Weimers said. “I have the best job at the newspaper, in one of the most interesting places in the country, and that’s why I stayed such a long time.”

Weimers compared Silicon Valley to Florence, Italy, where the Renaissance, which changed the future of the world, started.

“Now it’s happening here. Technology has shrunk the globe. You can put up a Web site and you’re in business,” he said.

“I used an ATM in Europe to get money and it went through a German Bank to Detroit to my bank in United States and back to Europe. I had money in 16 seconds. That’s how the world has changed.”

Weimers said it’s a privilege to be in the middle of the technology revolution. “Silicon Valley is an innovative place,” he said. “It’s the only place to be.”

Eadweard Muybridge, working with Leland Stanford’s racehorses, started a revolution with the question of whether a horse is airborne when he gallops. His mounting camera plates on a cylinder to capture motion was the start of movies.

There is a historical marker in front of Hewlett-Packard’s original garage in Palo Alto. Steve Wozniak put together “cool stuff” to make the Apple Computer, Nolan Bushnell started Atari. Sunnyvale recently placed a marker in front of Rooster T. Feathers in honor of Bushnell.

“These people didn’t want to be millionaires. In describing their thought process, it was inspiration and wild passion and they had fun doing it,” Weimers said.

He discussed the changing print media. It’s not dying out; people are still curious and want information. “After all television didn’t kill the movies,” he said.

Weimers said the Mercury was the first newspaper to go on-line and it provides an alternate way for people to seek information. “I get different requests from readers from Boston to Berlin.

When asked where he gets his information and who helps him write his column, he said “I write it myself. Half the information comes from e-mails and faxes and the other half by my own curiosity.”