Everything about Silicon Valley totally explained
Silicon Valley is the
southern part of the
San Francisco Bay Area in
Northern California,
United States. The term originally referred to the region's large number of
silicon chip innovators and manufacturers, but eventually came to refer to all the
high-tech businesses in the area; it's now generally used as a
metonym for the high-tech sector. Despite the development of other high-tech economic centers throughout the United States, Silicon Valley continues to be the leading high-tech hub because of its large number of engineers and
venture capitalists. Geographically, Silicon Valley encompasses the northern part of
Santa Clara Valley and adjacent communities.
Origin of the term
The term
Silicon Valley was coined by
Ralph Vaerst, a Northern California entrepreneur. Its first published use is credited to
Don Hoefler, a friend of Vaerst's, who used the phrase as the title of a series of articles in the weekly trade
newspaper Electronic News. The series, entitled "Silicon Valley USA," began in the paper's issue dated
January 11,
1971.
Valley refers to the
Santa Clara Valley, located at the southern end of
San Francisco Bay, while
Silicon refers to the high concentration of companies involved in the
semiconductor and
computer industries that were concentrated in the area. These firms slowly replaced the
orchards which gave the area its initial nickname, the Valley of Heart's Delight.
History
Perhaps the strongest thread that runs through the Valley’s past and present is the drive to “play” with novel technology, which, when bolstered by an advanced engineering degree and channeled by astute management, has done much to create the industrial powerhouse we see in the Valley today. |
Since the early twentieth century, Silicon Valley has been home to a vibrant, growing electronics industry. The industry began through experimentation and innovation in the fields of radio, television, and military electronics.
Stanford University, its affiliates, and graduates have played a major role in the evolution of this area.
Roots in radio and military technology
The
San Francisco Bay Area had long been a major site of
U.S. Navy research and technology. In 1909,
Charles Herrold started the first
radio station in the United States with regularly scheduled programming in
San Jose. Later that year,
Stanford University graduate Cyril Elwell purchased the U.S. patents for
Poulsen arc radio transmission technology and founded the
Federal Telegraph Corporation (FTC) in Palo Alto. Over the next decade, the FTC created the world's first global radio communication system, and signed a contract with the U.S. Navy in 1912. A number of technology firms had set up shop in the area around Moffett to serve the Navy. When the Navy gave up its airship ambitions and moved most of its West Coast operations to
San Diego,
NACA (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, forerunner of
NASA) took over portions of Moffett for
aeronautics research. Many of the original companies stayed, while new ones moved in. The immediate area was soon filled with
aerospace firms such as
Lockheed.
Stanford Industrial Park
After World War II, universities were experiencing enormous demand due to returning students. To address the financial demands of Stanford's growth requirements, and to provide local employment opportunities for graduating students,
Frederick Terman proposed the leasing of Stanford's lands for use as an office park, named the
Stanford Industrial Park (later
Stanford Research Park). Leases were limited to high technology companies. Its first tenant was
Varian Associates, founded by Stanford alumni in the 1930s to build military radar components. However, Terman also found
venture capital for civilian technology start-ups . One of the major success stories was
Hewlett-Packard. Founded in
Packard's garage by Stanford graduates
William Hewlett and
David Packard, Hewlett-Packard moved its offices into the Stanford Research Park slightly after 1953. In 1954, Stanford created the Honors Cooperative Program to allow full-time employees of the companies to pursue graduate degrees from the University on a part-time basis. The initial companies signed five-year agreements in which they'd pay double the tuition for each student in order to cover the costs. Hewlett-Packard has become the largest personal computer manufacturer in the world, and transformed the home printing market when it released the first
ink jet printer in 1984. In addition, the tenancy of Eastman Kodak and General Electric undoubtedly made Stanford Industrial Park a center of technology in the mid-1990's.
Silicon transistor
In 1953,
William Shockley left
Bell Labs in a disagreement over the handling of the invention of the
transistor. After returning to
California Institute of Technology for a short while, Shockley moved to
Mountain View, California in 1956, and founded
Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. Unlike many other researchers who used
germanium as the semiconductor material, Shockley believed that silicon was the better material for making transistors. Shockley intended to replace the current transistor with a new three-element design (today known as the
Shockley diode), but the design was considerably more difficult to build than the "simple" transistor. In 1957, Shockley decided to end research on the silicon transistor. As a result,
eight engineers left the company to form
Fairchild Semiconductor. Two of the original employees of Fairchild Semiconductor,
Robert Noyce and
Gordon Moore, would go on to found
Intel.
Venture capital firms
By the early
1970s there were many
semiconductor companies in the area,
computer firms using their devices, and programming and service companies serving both. Industrial space was plentiful and housing was still inexpensive. The growth was fueled by the emergence of the
venture capital industry on
Sand Hill Road, beginning with
Kleiner Perkins in 1972; the availability of venture capital exploded after the successful $1.3 billion
IPO of
Apple Computer in December 1980.
The rise of software
Although semiconductors are still a major component of the area's economy, Silicon Valley has been most famous in recent years for innovations in software and
Internet services. Silicon Valley has significantly influenced computer operating systems,
software, and user interfaces.
Using money from NASA and the
U.S. Air Force,
Doug Engelbart invented the
mouse and hypertext-based collaboration tools in the mid-1960s, while at
Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International). When Engelbart's
Augmentation Research Center declined in influence due to personal conflicts and the loss of government funding,
Xerox hired some of Engelbart's best researchers. In turn, in the 1970s and 1980s, Xerox's
Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) played a pivotal role in
object-oriented programming,
graphical user interfaces (GUIs),
Ethernet,
PostScript, and
laser printers.
While Xerox marketed equipment using its technologies, for the most part its technologies flourished elsewhere. The diaspora of Xerox inventions led directly to
3Com and
Adobe Systems, and indirectly to
Cisco,
Apple Computer and
Microsoft. Apple's
Macintosh GUI was largely a result of
Steve Jobs' visit to PARC and the subsequent hiring of key personnel. Microsoft's Windows GUI is based on Apple's work, more or less directly. Cisco's impetus stemmed from the need to route a variety of protocols over Stanford's campus Ethernet.
Internet bubble
Silicon Valley is generally considered to have been the center of the
dot-com bubble which started from the mid-1990s and collapsed after the
NASDAQ stock market began to decline dramatically in April of 2000. During the bubble era, real estate prices reached unprecedented levels. For a brief time,
Sand Hill Road was home to the most expensive commercial real estate in the world, and the booming economy resulted in severe
traffic congestion.
Even after the dot-com crash, Silicon Valley continues to maintain its status as one of the top research and development centers in the world. A 2006
Wall Street Journal story found that 13 of the 20 most inventive towns in America were in California, and 10 of those were in Silicon Valley. San Jose led the list with 3,867 utility patents filed in 2005, and number two was Sunnyvale, at 1,881 utility patents.
Economy
Notable companies
Thousands of
high technology companies are headquartered either in or near Silicon Valley; among those, the following are in the
Fortune 1000:
Additional notable companies headquartered (or with a significant presence) in Silicon Valley include (some defunct or subsumed):
3Com (headquartered in Marlborough, Massachusetts)
Actel
Actuate Corporation
Adaptec
Amdahl
Aptina Imaging
Aricent
Asus
Atari
Atmel
BEA Systems
Cypress Semiconductor
Computer Literacy Bookstore
Facebook
Foundry Networks
Fujitsu (headquartered in Tokyo, Japan)
Gaia Online
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies
Juniper Networks
Knight-Ridder (acquired by The McClatchy Company)
Logitech
McAfee
Memorex (acquired by Imation and moved to Cerritos, California)
Microsoft (headquartered in Redmond, Washington)
Netflix
Netscape (acquired by AOL)
NeXT Computer, Inc. (acquired by Apple)
Nintendo of America
Opera Software
OPPO
Palm, Inc.
PalmSource, Inc. (acquired by ACCESS)
PayPal (now part of eBay)
Rambus
Redback Networks
SAP AG (headquartered in Walldorf, Germany)
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Image
Sony
SRI International
Tesla Motors
Tellme Networks (acquired by Microsoft)
TiVo
UpdatePower
VA Software (Slashdot)
WebEx (acquired by Cisco Systems)
VeriSign
Veritas Software (acquired by Symantec)
VMware (acquired by EMC)
Xilinx
Silicon Valley is also home to the high-tech superstore retail chain Fry's Electronics.
Universities
Northwestern Polytechnic University (Fremont)
Carnegie Mellon University (West Coast Campus)
San José State University
Santa Clara University
Stanford University
University of California, Santa Cruz (NASA Ames UARC & UC Extension)
Cities
A number of cities are located in Silicon Valley (in alphabetical order):
Campbell
Cupertino
East Palo Alto (San Mateo County)
Fremont
Los Altos
Los Altos Hills
Los Gatos
Menlo Park (San Mateo County)
Milpitas
Mountain View
Newark
Palo Alto
San Jose
Santa Clara
Saratoga
Sunnyvale
Cities sometimes associated with the region:
Gilroy
Hayward
Morgan Hill
Redwood City (home to Oracle and PDI/DreamWorks)
San Mateo
Scotts Valley
Santa CruzFurther Information
Get more info on 'Silicon Valley'.
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