Silicon Valley

[6] Silicon Valley is home to many of the world's largest high-tech corporations, including the headquarters of more than 30 businesses in the Fortune 1000, and thousands of startup companies.

[10][11][12] "Silicon" refers to the chemical element used in silicon-based transistors and integrated circuit chips, which is the focus of a large number of computer hardware and software innovators and manufacturers in the region.

[13] Earlier uses outside journalism exist; for example, a May 1970 advertisement in the Peninsula Times Tribune described a Palo Alto company that "helps production people in Silicon Valley.

"[14]However, the term did not gain widespread use until the early 1980s,[1] at the time of the introduction of the IBM PC and numerous related hardware and software products to the consumer market.

[20][21] Silicon Valley was born through the intersection of several contributing factors, including a skilled science research base housed in area universities, plentiful venture capital, permissive government regulation, and steady U.S. Department of Defense spending.

Northern California was even more welcoming, with a group of venture capitalists actively seeking high-tech business ideas, clustered on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park and Palo Alto.

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.

[32] Terman nurtured companies like Hewlett-Packard, Varian Associates, Eastman Kodak, General Electric, Lockheed Corporation, and other high-tech firms, until what would become Silicon Valley grew up around the Stanford University campus.

In 1954 Stanford originated the Honors Cooperative Program to allow full-time employees of the companies to pursue graduate degrees from the university on a part-time basis.

It rescheduled a meeting in Palo Alto regarding his vision of a computer network, which he imagined as an electronic commons open to all, the main and essential medium of informational interaction for governments, institutions, corporations, and individuals.

[46][47][48][49] As head of IPTO from 1962 to 1964, "Licklider initiated three of the most important developments in information technology: the creation of computer science departments at several major universities, time-sharing, and networking.

[54] Prior to 1970, most Northern California lawyers were based in San Francisco, especially the experienced patent attorneys whom the high-tech industry needed to protect its intellectual property.

[57] During this era, lawyers evolved from their relatively narrow conventional role as protectors of intellectual property into business advisers, intermediaries, and dealmakers, and thereby acquired great prominence in Silicon Valley.

[64] The first meeting was held as of March 1975 at French's garage in Menlo Park, San Mateo County, California; which was on occasion of the arrival of the MITS Altair microcomputer, the first unit sent to the area for review by People's Computer Company.

Using money from NASA, the US Air Force, and ARPA, Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse and hypertext-based collaboration tools in the mid-1960s and 1970s while at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), first publicly demonstrated in 1968 in what is now known as The Mother of All Demos.

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.

[69] 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 2000.

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.

[77] Largely a result of the high technology sector, the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area has the most millionaires and the most billionaires in the United States per capita, although the venture capital ecosystem has grown more geographically decentralized over time.

[84] More traditional industries also recognize the potential of high-tech development, and several car manufacturers have opened offices in Silicon Valley to capitalize on its entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The workforce was for the most part composed of Asian and Latino immigrants who were paid low wages and worked in hazardous conditions due to the chemicals used in the manufacture of integrated circuits.

[99] In addition, Saxenian's study found that successful immigrant entrepreneurs relied heavily on ethnic resources as they integrated into the Silicon Valley work culture and American society.

Bloomberg reported that Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft attended the 20th annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference to actively recruit and potentially hire female engineers and technology experts.

[109] After UC Davis published its Study of California Women Business Leaders in November 2006,[103] some San Jose Mercury News readers dismissed the possibility that sexism contributed in making Silicon Valley's leadership gender gap the highest in the state.

[110] The article's author, Nina Burleigh, asked, "Where were all these offended people when women like Heidi Roizen published accounts of having a venture capitalist stick her hand in his pants under a table while a deal was being discussed?

[114] Nevertheless, the case, which had wide press coverage, resulted in major advances in consciousness of gender discrimination on the part of venture capital and technology firms and their women employees.

According to a 2019 Lincoln Network survey, 48% of high-tech workers in Silicon Valley identify as Christians, with Roman Catholicism (27%) being its largest branch, followed by Protestantism (19%).

[130] In 2015, MIT researchers developed a novel method for measuring which towns are home to startups with higher growth potential and this defines Silicon Valley to center on the municipalities of Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Sunnyvale.

[134] In 1980, Intelligent Machines Journal changed its name to InfoWorld, and, with offices in Palo Alto, began covering the emergence of the microcomputer industry in the valley.

Public broadcaster KQED (TV) and KQED-FM, as well as the Bay Area's local ABC station KGO-TV, operate bureaus in San Jose.

Map of Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley derives its name from the silicon used in transistors and computer chips , pioneered in the region in the 20th century.
Established in 1931, Moffett Field in Sunnyvale / Mountain View has played a strategic role in Silicon Valley's evolution, researching and developing key technologies, first for the U.S. military and then for NASA . Today it hosts the Ames Research Center .
Stanford University played the central role in the emergence of Silicon Valley, both through its academic programs and through its real investments into the local tech ecosystem, such as with the Stanford Research Park . [ 28 ]
The HP Garage , dubbed the "Birthplace of Silicon Valley", where Bill Hewlett and David Packard (founders of Hewlett-Packard ) began developing their audio oscillator in 1938
Plaque commemorating Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory as the first high-tech company in what would become Silicon Valley
The first IBM plant in California, established in San Jose in 1943
ARPANET , the predecessor to the Internet , began to be developed in 1966 by the U.S. Department of Defense and four research universities in California, including Stanford.
The Homebrew Computer Club was a highly influential computer hobbyist group in the 1970s and 80s that produced many influential tech founders, like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak . Pictured is the invitation to its first meeting in 1975.
Apple founder Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone in 2007
Adobe World Headquarters in Downtown San Jose
eBay in San Jose
PayPal in San Jose
Cisco in the Golden Triangle
Seagate Technology in Fremont
Western Digital in San Jose
Silicon Valley Pride in San Jose
Headquarters of The Mercury News , Silicon Valley's largest newspaper, in Downtown San Jose
50 W. San Fernando Street in downtown San Jose is the site of the world's first radio broadcasting station , created in 1909 by Charles Herrold , the "Father of Broadcasting". [ 135 ]