Silicon Valley is simply a name given to a southern portion of San Francisco Bay region, California. The valley referred to Santa Clara Valley and Silicon referred to a larger number of the silicon chip producers in the area, currently, the region is a home to the majority of the global high-tech corporation such as Fortune 1000, and numerous start up companies. Further, Silicon Valley has been established to account for about one-third of the US venture capital investment Silicon Valley is thus an area located in San Francisco, California. On the east, there exists San Francisco Bay; Santa Cruz Mountains in the West and to the southeast is the Coast Range 1 . In the last century, fruit orchards were dominating the region, and during this time, the region was referred to as Valley of Heart's Delight. The Growth of Silicon Valley is attributed to the identification and manufacturing of silicon chips
Silicon Valley emerged through numerous factors that contributed to what it is currently. Some if the contributing factors include the steady US Department of Defence and the increasing venture capital. Studies have pointed out that Stafford University played a critical leadership role towards the development of the valley. All these factors combined led to the growth and success of Silicon Valley 2 . During this period, there was the emergence of the telegraph and the radio technology. The first ever ship to shore the wireless telegraph information in the US was from San Francisco lightship, and it signalled the coming back of the fleets from Philippines after the war between Spanish and Americans. Studies have further shown that California had its first ever click on telegraph key in the year 1853. The Bay Area was established as a primary site of US Navy research. In the year 1909, a radio station was established by Charles Herrold in the US with regular programming in San Jose. Bay Area later became a centre of Ham radio and approximately 10 percent of the operators in the US 3 .
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Throughout the WWII, there was an increasing demand for universalities as a result of increasing number of returning students. To manage the current financial demand of the growth requirement of Stanford and at the same time create job opportunities for all the graduating students, there was a proposal made by Frederick Terman to lease Stanford land to be used as an official Park and later was named Stanford Industrial Park. Around 1954, Stanford developed honors programs that were aimed at enabling all the full-time employees to pursue their graduate degrees from the University. Hewlett-Packard turned out to be the largest personal computer manufacturer globally leading to the massive transformation of printing market. The rest of the tenants were comprised of Eastman Kodak, General Electric, and Lockheed.
The silicon transistor was first invented by William Shockley at Mountain View, California, in 1956. William Shockley believed that silicon was one of the best element to develop transistors hence replaced the current resistor with Shockey diode at his company Fairchild Semiconductor. Two of the staffs at Fairchild Semiconductor later founded Intel.
Immigration reform was further made with the introduction of Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 also mass exodus by Vietnamese boat people that led to increasing number of immigrant’s inflow especially the Asians, Latinos, and even Portuguese, to contribute workforce to high-tech industries. As a result of this, Asia American population rose significantly from 43,000 in the year 1970 to about 430,000 in the year 2000.The Latino population also grew to about 24 percent in the county, on the other hand; African-American population rose significantly to about 5 percent. The Silicon Valley population is approximately 3.5 to 4 million. About third of the entire Silicon Valley scientists and the engineers were all migrants and a quarter of Silicon Valley's high-technology companies are run by Chinese CEOs. A study by the University of California, Davis established that 103 of the 400 corporations in California were established in Santa Clara state and 8.8% of Silicon Valley corporations had females CEOs.
In the year 1974, Intel produced Intel 8080 which was considered the first usable microprocessor 4 . The microprocessor incorporated the primary functions performed by the computer's central processing unit (CPU) within a single integrated circuit (IC). By 1970s, numerous semiconductor companies emerged in the area. In the year 1980 a media company, Intelligent Machines Journal extensively covered the emergence of the microcomputer industry in the Silicon Valley 5 . Semiconductors have become the major source of economic growth of the Silicon Valley, but in the recent year, the region has become famous for its massive innovations of software and internet services. It has been shown that Silicon Valley has impacted the world’s computer operating system, user interface, and even software. Around 1995, in Silicon Valley, in terms use was made open for commercial purposes and this led to the first emergence of Amazon.com and eBay 6 .
Further research has shown that Silicon Valley is the centre of the dot-com bubble and this emerged the mid-1990s but later on collapsed immediately after NASDAQ stock market dropped in the year 2000. Throughout the bubble era, studies have pointed out that real estate prices rose rapidly reaching unprecedented levels. Currently, Sand is the home to most expensive commercial real estate globally, and at the same time, the booming economy led to increasing traffic congestion.
Immediately after the crash of the dot-com, Silicon Valley has remained at the top as a global research and development center. Based on a report made by The Wall Street Journal in the year 2006 established that about 12 out of 20 highly inventive cities in America are located in California and among them ten are in Silicon Valley. Currently, Silicon Valley has been reported to be a home of numerous Unicorn Ventures also referred to as startup companies, and their evaluation is more than $ 1 billion dollar. Notable companies established at Silicon Valley include thousand of the global high technology corporations, and among them 39 are among the Fortune 1000.Silicon Valley has become a home to the worldwide high-tech superstore retail chain Fry's Electronics 7 .
Silicon Valley has further been argued to have both business and social ethos that highly supports innovation and high level of entrepreneurship. Based on a study carried out by Aea in the year 2006, it was established that Silicon Valley was the third largest high-tech center throughout the US with approximately 225,300 high-tech jobs. The Bay Area was also ranked first with about 387,000 high-tech jobs. It has thus been confirmed that currently, Silicon Valley has the largest number of high-tech employees throughout the metropolitan area with about 285.9 out of 1000 private sector workforce. Additionally, Silicon Valley has the highest high-tech salary of about $ 144,800. It has been established that transistor manufacturing is one of the core industry in the Silicon Valley and the workforce comprises of the Asiana and the Latina immigrants who were reported to be working in hazardous condition and earned low wages. Many employment opportunities are created each year in the Silicon Valley than the houses are built. This has made housing prices to be very high that majority of the workers could not afford 8 . A 2016 report established that a two-bed roomed houses apartment was rented at $2,500 while at the same time, home price median was $1 million 9 . The Financial Post established that the Silicon Valley was one of the most expensive U.S. housing regions and this made the problem of homelessness is a major issue among the middle-income residents. Public school funding in most of the upscale Silicon Valley including Woodside, California is normally supplemented by increasing granted specifically coming from the private foundations and specifically set up for that particular purposes and also funded by the residents 10 . Most of the schools established in less favourable demographies often will depend on state funding including East.
In conclusion, the essay has critically analyzed the history of Silicon Valley from the time it was a small village to what it is currently as one of the most successful cities in the world. It is clear that the emergence of Silicon Valley was driven by the invention of Silicon that has transformed the entire economy regarding the creation of multinational technological companies that has created many jobs for the locals and a huge number of the migrants across the globe. Currently, the city has massively developed besides being one of the richest cities in the US and a home to numerous Forbes top 1000 corporations.
Bibliography
"The Origins Of The Silicon Valley". 2016. Sjsu.Edu . http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/sivalley.htm.
Hamel, Gary. "Bringing Silicon Valley inside." Harvard Business Review 77, no. 5 (1998): 70- 84.
McKendrick, David, Richard F. Doner, and Stephan Haggard. From Silicon Valley to Singapore: Location and competitive advantage in the hard disk drive industry . Stanford Business Books, 2000.
Rogers, Everett M., and Judith K. Larsen. Silicon Valley fever: Growth of high-technology culture . Basic Books (AZ), 1984.
Saxenian, AnnaLee. "The origins and dynamics of production networks in Silicon Valley." Research policy 20, no. 5 (1991): 423-437.
