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Silicon Valley

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A view of downtown San Jose, the self-proclaimed "Capital of Silicon Valley."

Silicon Valley is the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the 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 is now generally used as a metonym for the high-tech sector.

Silicon Valley encompasses the northern part of Santa Clara Valley and adjacent communities in the southern parts of the San Francisco Peninsula and East Bay. It reaches approximately from Menlo Park (on the Peninsula) and the Fremont/Newark area in the East Bay down through San Jose, centered roughly on Sunnyvale. The Highway 17 corridor through the Santa Cruz Mountains into Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz County is sometimes considered a part of Silicon Valley, as well as the East Bay cities of Livermore and Pleasanton.

Origin of the term

The term Silicon Valley was coined by journalist Don Hoefler in 1971. He used it as the title of a series of articles "Silicon Valley USA" in a weekly trade newspaper Electronic News which started with the January 11, 1971 issue. Valley refers to the Santa Clara Valley, located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, while Silicon refers to the high concentration of semiconductor and computer-related industries in the area. These and similar technology 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. -- Timothy J. Sturgeon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Template:PDFlink

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.

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. [1] Later that year, Stanford graduate Cyril Elwell purchased the U.S. patents for the Poulsen arc radio transmission technology and founded the Federal Telegraph Corporation (FTC) in Palo Alto [2]. 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 Template:PDFlink.

In 1933, Sunnyvale Naval Air Station was commissioned by the United States Government for the use as a Naval air station. The station was renamed Moffett Field, and between 1933 and 1947, US Navy blimps were based here. [3] A number of technology firms had set up shop in the area around Moffett to serve the Navy. When the Navy moved most of its West Coast operations to San Diego [citation needed], NASA (called NACA at that time) 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 [4], Frederick Terman proposed the leasing of Stanford's lands for use as an office park [5], 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 [6]. 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 [7].

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 would 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 [8], and transformed the home printing market when it released the first ink jet printer in 1984 [9]. In addition, the tenancy of Eastman Kodak and General Electric undoubtedly made Stanford Industrial Park a center of technology in the mid-1900's [10].

Silicon transistor

In 1953, William Shockley quit Bell Labs in a disagreement over the way the transistor. After divorcing his wife, and returning to California Institute of Technology for a short while, in 1956 Shockley moved to Mountain View, California and created Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. Shockley, unlike many other researchers using germanium as the semiconductor material, believed that silicon was the better material for making transistors. Shockley intended to supersede 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 [11]. 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 in 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 became 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. [1]

Notable companies

Thousands of high technology companies are headquartered either in or near Silicon Valley; among those, the following are in the Fortune 1000:

Adobe Systems
Advanced Micro Devices(AMD)
Apple Inc.
eBay
Google
File:Hpheadquartersentrance.jpg
Hewlett Packard
Intel's headquarters, the Robert Noyce building
Intuit
Oracle
Yahoo!

Additional notable companies headquartered (or with a significant presence) in Silicon Valley include (some defunct or subsumed):

Befitting its heritage, Silicon Valley is home to the high-tech superstore chain Fry's Electronics.

For a larger list of companies, see Category:Companies based in Silicon Valley

Universities

Technically the following universities are not located in Silicon Valley, but have been instrumental as sources of research and new graduates:

Cities

A number of cities are located in Silicon Valley (in alphabetical order):

Cities sometimes associated with the region:

Trivia

In the James Bond film A View to a Kill, villain Max Zorin plans to destroy Silicon Valley by detonating explosives between the Hayward Fault and San Andreas Fault, causing them to flood. He dubs the operation 'Main Strike' in order to gain complete control of the microchip market by selling his own and destroying the competition. Project Main Strike demanded each collaborator would pay Zorin US$100m, plus in the future, half of their net income, thereby establishing an exclusive marketing agreement with him. These terms are instantly described as "outrageous" by one Taiwanese Tycoon who rises from his seat in disbelief at the proposal, and then refuses to witness Zorin's proposed demonstration.

Silicon Valley mostly lies between two freeways: U.S. 101 follows the edge of the San Francisco Bay; Interstate 280 runs roughly parallel to 101 through the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The two freeways connect San Francisco and San Jose, and onramps are marked "101 North/South" or "280 North/South", although the freeways do not always run even approximately north or south. (At some points, "280 South" actually runs due east.) This has inspired the terms "logical north" and "logical south", which mean the signed directions, as opposed to compass headings. [citation needed]

The made for TV movie, Pirates of Silicon Valley, details the exploits of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and the general home PC revolution.

In the BBC sitcom Ideal, two cast members are in the imaginary band Silicon Vallets. The name uses Silicon Valley, but mixed with parking vallets to create a clever pun.

See also

Further reading

References

  1. ^ Reed Albergotti, "The Most Inventive Towns in America," Wall Street Journal, 22-23 July 2006, P1.
  2. ^ Although Redwood City is not part of the region traditionally recognized as Silicon Valley, many now consider it to be part of the region, because of its proximity to Menlo Park and its high density of technology companies.
  3. ^ Although Santa Cruz County is not always considered part of Silicon Valley, several smaller high-tech companies have located in the Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz area.
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