Silicon Valley.docVIP

Silicon Valley Hangar One at the US Naval Air Station, Sunnyvale, CA Historic District (Moffet Field), designed to house airship dirigibles, displays the military interest in Santa Clara County as well as the adaptive uses for technology the valley is famous forPhotograph by Judith Silva, courtesy of the City of Santa Clara Silicon Valley is a nickname for the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in northern California, USA. It 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 term The term Silicon Valley was coined by journalist Don C. Hoefler in 1971. Silicon refers to the high concentration of semiconductor and computer-related industries in the area; Valley refers to the Santa Clara Valley. The term may also be applied to surrounding areas on both sides of San Francisco Bay into which many of these industries have expanded. For many years in the 1970s and 1980s it was also incorrectly called Silicone Valley, mostly by journalists, before the name became commonplace in American culture. History The location of the high tech industry in the valley was due largely to two men, William Shockley and Frederick Terman. Terman, a professor at Stanford University, decided that a vast area of unused Stanford land was perfect for real-estate development, and set up a program to encourage students to stay in the area by finding them venture capital. One of the major success stories of the program was that it convinced two students to stay in the area, William Hewlett and David Packard. Hewlett-Packard would go on to be one of the first high tech firms in the area that were not directly related to NASA or the US Navy. In 1951 the program was again expanded with the creation of the Stanford Industrial Park, a serie