The Silicon Valley

Made By-Piyush Shaw

Class VII-E Roll No.- 43

Contents

• Acknowledgement• Introduction• History And Its Beginning• IT Companies• The Growth Of It Industry• Background • The PC Revolution• Why It’s Named Silicon Valley?• Factors and Recent Trends• Conclusion

AcknowledgementI would like to thank my family

members help and constant support in doing this project. I would like to thank my Geography Teacher , Tr. Sanchita Ghosh for giving us this project. I came to know many other things from this project was indeed helpful for me in gaining knowledge.

Introduction

• Silicon Valley is a nickname for the southern portion of the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States. It is home to many of the world's largest high-tech corporations, as well as thousands of tech startup companies. The region occupies roughly the same area as the Santa Clara Valley where it is centered, including San Jose and surrounding cities and towns. The term originally referred to the large number of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers in the region, but eventually came to refer to all high tech businesses in the area, and is now generally used as a metonym for the American high-technology economic sector.

• Silicon Valley is a leading hub and startup ecosystem for high-tech innovation and development, accounting for one-third of all of the venture capital investment in the United States. Geographically, Silicon Valley is generally thought to encompass all of the Santa Clara Valley, the southern half of the Peninsula, and southern portions of the East Bay.

History and its Beginning

Professor Frederick Terman, who is called the ‘Father of Silicon Valley’ , played an important role in the development of the local high-tech industry. Large Scale migration of graduates to the East Coast for jobs led him to encourage students such as William Hewlett and David Packard to start companies near Stanford University. Today, Hewlett Packard is a multinational company that produces computers, electronic measuring devices and equipment worth billions of dollars of annual revenue and has more than 100,000 employees worldwide. In 1951, the standard Industrial Park was founded, which was a centre of high-technology industries located close to the Stanford University.

IT Companies

Thousands of high technology companies are headquartered in Silicon Valley. Among those, the following are in the Fortune 1000 are :

1) Ebay2) Yahoo3) Intel4) Apple5) Dell

The Growth Of IT Industry

During the 1950s,the semiconductor industry came up that used silicon as a semiconductor. Mass manufacturing of silicon chips began in the semiconductor industry and it was this industry that later gave rise to the name Silicon Valley. In 1973, Intel introduced the standard CPU (Central Processing Unit or microprocessor).These CPU’s formed the basis of a computer’s operation. Eventually, Japanese companies started dominating the market because they were able to ensure production at cheaper rates and according to customer preferences. Much of the production facilities of the semi-conductor industry of Silicon Valley were shifted to countries where cheap labor was available.

Background

• Stanford University, its affiliates, and graduates have played a major role in the development of this area.[2] Some examples include the work of Lee De Forest with his invention of a pioneering vacuum tube called the Audion and the oscilloscopes of Hewlett-Packard.

• A very powerful sense of regional solidarity accompanied the rise of Silicon Valley. From the 1890s, Stanford University's leaders saw its mission as service to the West and shaped the school accordingly. At the same time, the perceived exploitation of the West at the hands of eastern interests fueled booster-like attempts to build self-sufficient indigenous local industry. Thus, regionalism helped align Stanford's interests with those of the area's high-tech firms for the first fifty years of Silicon Valley's development.[3]

• During the 1940s and 1950s, Frederick Terman, as Stanford's dean of engineering and provost, encouraged faculty and graduates to start their own companies. He is credited with nurturing Hewlett-Packard, Varian Associates, and other high-tech firms, until what would become Silicon Valley grew up around the Stanford campus. Terman is often called "the father of Silicon Valley".[4]

In 1956 William Shockley, the creator of the transistor, moved from New Jersey to Mountain View, California to start Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory to live closer to his ailing mother in Palo Alto, California. Shockley's work served as the basis for many electronic developments for decades.

The PC Revolution

In 1976, the first personal computer, Apple I was released and in the very next year Apple II was introduced. That was the beginning of a successful multinational company- Apple Computer. Hewlett-Packard launched its first PC in 1980. In 1982 International Business Machines (IBM) launched a personal computer which had a disk operating system-DOS-developed by Microsoft. Microprocessors gradually improved and a host of computer peripherals flooded the market.

Why it’s named Silicon Valley?

The term Silicon Valley is attributed to Ralph Vaerst, a local 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 in the USA", began in the paper's January 11, 1971, issue. The term gained widespread use in the early 1980s, at the time of the introduction of the IBM PC and numerous related hardware and software products to the consumer market. The Silicon part of the name refers to the high concentration of companies involved in the making of semiconductors (silicon is used to create most semiconductors commercially) and computer industries that were concentrated in the area. These firms slowly replaced the orchards and related agriculture and food production companies which gave the area its initial nickname — the "Valley of Heart's Delight."

Factors and Recent Trends

Factors- A huge capital base, technically skilled personnel, power

facilities, governmental support and a pleasant climate have favored the growth and development of the IT Industry in the Silicon Valley.

Recent Trends- The Internet has changed the world of Information

Communication Technology. Silicon Valley has emerged triumphant from this recent IT Revolution. There are more than 4,000 IT and related companies located in this region and some of the giants include Intel, Sun , Apple Computers, Hewlett- Packard and IBM.

ConclusionI would like to sincerely thank

my Geography Teacher ,Tr. Sanchita Ghosh for her help and constant support and also for giving us this opportunity of making the project. I came to know about many things about the Silicon Valley. I would again thank my dear teacher for giving us this project.

Thank You Teacher !!!!!!!!!!!