Reason

1. The foundation of early radio and military technology. The San Francisco Bay Area has been a research and development base for the U.S. Navy for a long time. In 1909, the first radio station in the United States with a fixed program time was born in San Jose. In 1933, Sunnyvale Air Force Base (later renamed Murphy Field) became a base for U.S. Navy airships. Some technology companies serving the Navy began to appear around the base. After World War II, the Navy moved its West Coast operations to San Diego in southern California, and the National Space Council (the predecessor to NASA) used part of Moffett Field for aerospace research. Companies serving aerospace began to emerge, including what became known as Lockheed. 2. Stanford Industrial Park After the end of World War II, the number of students returning to American universities increased sharply. In order to meet financial needs and provide employment opportunities for graduates, Stanford University adopted Frederick Terman's suggestion to open an industrial park and allow high-tech companies to rent its land as office space. The first company to settle in was Varian Associates, founded by Stanford graduates in the 1930s. Terman also provides venture capital to civilian technology start-ups. Hewlett Packard is one of the most successful examples. In the mid-1990s, Kodak and General Electric also had research institutions in the industrial park, and the Stanford Industrial Park gradually became a technology center. 3. Silicon transistor In 1956, William Shockley, the inventor of the transistor, founded the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, south of Stanford University. In 1957, Shockley decided to stop researching silicon transistors. At that time, eight engineers from the company left to form Fairchild Semiconductor Company, known as the "Rebellious Eight." Noyce and Moore from "The Bad 8" later founded Intel. Among those who worked at Fairchild, Spock later became the CEO of National Semiconductor, and another, Sanders, founded AMD. 4. Venture Capital Since the first venture capital was settled on Sand Hill Road next to Stanford in 1972, venture capital has greatly promoted the growth of Silicon Valley. The listing of Apple in 1980 attracted more venture capital to Silicon Valley. Sand Hill became synonymous with venture capital in Silicon Valley. 5. The rise of the software industry. In addition to the semiconductor industry, Silicon Valley is also known for its software industry and Internet service industry. Xerox's research center in Palo Alto has made pioneering contributions in the fields of OOP (object-oriented programming), GUI (graphical interface), Ethernet and laser printers. Many well-known companies today have benefited from Xerox's research. For example, Apple and Microsoft successively used GUIs for their respective operating systems, and Cisco was founded from the idea of ??freely transmitting many network protocols within the Stanford campus network.

Features

Silicon Valley was gradually formed with the rapid development of microelectronics technology since the mid-1960s; it is characterized by some of the top American universities nearby with strong scientific research capabilities. Relying on world-renowned universities such as Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, and based on a group of high-tech small and medium-sized companies, it also has large companies such as Cisco, Intel, HP, and Apple, integrating science, technology, and production. Silicon Valley has more than 10,000 large and small electronic industry companies. The semiconductor integrated circuits and electronic computers they produce account for about 1/3 and 1/6 of the United States. After the 1980s, with the development of biology, space, ocean, communications, and energy materials Research institutions for emerging technologies have emerged in the region, and Silicon Valley has objectively become the cradle of high-tech in the United States. Now Silicon Valley has become synonymous with high-tech gathering areas around the world.

History

The area has always been a work site for the U.S. Navy, and the Navy's flight research base is also located here. Later, many technology company stores were built around the Navy's research base. stand up.

But when the Navy moved most of its West Coast engineering projects to San Diego, NASA took over the Navy's original engineering projects, but most of the companies stayed. When new companies moved in, the area gradually became a Aerospace enterprise gathering area. At that time, there were no civilian high-tech companies here. Although there were many good universities here, after students graduated, they chose to look for job opportunities on the East Coast. Frederick Terman, a talented professor at Stanford University, discovered this, so he chose a large open space in the school for real estate development, and set up some programs to encourage students to develop their "venture investments" locally. capital)” career. Under Terman's guidance, two of his students, William Hewlett and David Packard, founded Hewlett-Packard in a garage with $538 - a high-tech company that had nothing to do with NASA or the U.S. Navy. technology companies. This garage has now become a witness to the development of Silicon Valley. It has been announced by the California government as the birthplace of Silicon Valley and has become an important attraction. In 1951, Terman had a bigger idea, which was to establish Stanford Research Park, the first high-tech industrial park located near the university. Some of the smaller industrial buildings in the park were rented to some small technology companies at low rents. Today, these companies are the birthplace of important technologies, but they were not well known at the time. In the first few years, only a few companies settled here. Later, more and more companies settled here. They not only applied the latest technology of the university, but also rented the land of the school. These land rents became the source of income for Stanford University, making Stanford University Continue to thrive. Terman decided in the 1950s that new infrastructure should be built based on the "valley" principle. It was in this atmosphere that a prominent Californian, William Shockley, moved here. William's move can be regarded as a milestone in the semiconductor industry. He left Bell Labs in 1953 due to disagreements with colleagues. After the divorce, he returned alone to Caltech, where he earned a bachelor's degree in science. In 1956, he moved to Mountain View, California, close to his mother, to establish the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. In the period before this, the yet-to-be-formed semiconductor industry was mainly concentrated in Boston and Long Island, New York, in the eastern United States. For the development of the company, he specially recruited eight young people from the east, including Noyes, Moore, Spock, and Raymond. There he planned to capture the market by designing a component that could replace the transistor (now known as the Shockley diode). But he was stumped when he considered the problem of designing something simpler than a "simple" transistor. Stumped by the difficulties, Shockley became increasingly paranoid. He demanded polygraph tests on employees and announced their salaries, which angered everyone. In 1957, those eight outstanding young people collectively changed jobs and established Fairchild Semiconductor Company with the funding of an industrialist, Sherman Fairchild. Fairchild Company was headquartered in New York City and mainly engaged in cameras. Thanks to Noyce's invention of integrated circuit technology, which allows multiple transistors to be placed on a single crystal silicon wafer, Fairchild's success has skyrocketed. In 1965, Moore summarized the rule that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubled every 18 months, which is also known as "Moore's Law". Although this law was only summarized from the data in the 1960s, it was not until 21 The early years of the century are still valid. This kind of thing happens again and again, and engineers who are out of control continue to establish new companies. In early 1967, Spock, Raymond and others decided to leave Fairchild and create their own National Semiconductor, headquartered in Santa Clara. In 1968, the departure of Fairchild Marketing Manager Sanders led to the emergence of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in the world. In July of the same year, Noyce, Moore, and Grove left Fairchild to form Intel Corporation. Today Intel is the world's largest semiconductor integrated circuit manufacturer, with a market share of 80%.

With $80,000 in investment from entrepreneurs and $250,000 in loans, two friends with the same name, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, founded Apple. Jobs was good at business operations and Woz was good at technology. The two complemented each other's strengths and enabled Apple to develop rapidly. The Apple II produced by Apple in 1977 has been the leader in 8-bit microcomputers. The Macintosh, launched in 1984, is a model of friendly human-computer interface. It is widely used in publishing, graphic design and other fields. 1981 was the beginning of a nightmare for Fairchild. This year, a toxic solution leaked from a chip factory in San Jose, forcing the company to spend $12 million to replace soil and monitor water quality. From then on, the company began to decline and eventually disappeared. But people will not forget his contribution to the history of Silicon Valley and his great achievements in the development of monocrystalline silicon wafers. There are more than 100 companies founded by Fairchild employees in Silicon Valley and even across the United States.

Current situation

In 2006, there were 225,300 high-tech jobs in Silicon Valley. In terms of the density of high-tech employees, Silicon Valley ranks first in the United States, with 285.9 people working in the high-tech industry for every 1,000 people working in private companies. The average annual salary for high-tech positions also ranks first in the United States, reaching $144,800. In 2008, Silicon Valley's per capita GDP reached US$83,000, ranking first in the United States. Silicon Valley's GDP accounts for 5% of the total GDP of the United States, but its population is less than 1% of the country's. Silicon Valley is a concentration of high-tech talents in the United States, and it is also a concentration of talents in the American information industry. Currently, there are more than 1 million scientific and technological personnel from all over the United States and all over the world gathered in Silicon Valley. There are nearly a thousand academicians of the National Academy of Sciences working in Silicon Valley. There are more than 30 Nobel Prize-winning scientists. Silicon Valley is a holy land that American youth are fascinated by, and it is also an arena and gold rush for international students from all over the world. In Silicon Valley, most companies implement a three-in-one management mechanism of scientific research, technology development, production and marketing. Highly educated professional scientific and technical personnel often account for more than 80% of company employees. Silicon Valley's scientific and technical personnel are mostly outstanding people from all over the world. Not only do they have different native languages ??and skin colors, but they also have different cultural backgrounds and living customs, and their majors and expertise are also different. When such a group of scientific and technological experts gather together, their thinking is bound to be active, and sparks of innovation can easily burst out during mutual discussions. At present, the establishment and capital investment of high-tech companies in Silicon Valley are in the ascendant and are still showing a development trend.

Chinese in Silicon Valley

Professor Zhu Qingshi, president of the University of Science and Technology of China, said in an interview with reporters not long ago that "Half of the science and engineering graduates from Tsinghua, HKUST and Peking University have either early or early "The late ones are all gone", mainly to the United States, including Silicon Valley companies. Everland Iritani, a writer for the Los Angeles Times, said: "If you look at the employee lists of Silicon Valley companies, you will find countless Tsinghua graduates. They come to the United States to seek breakthroughs in engineering technology, and they have made great achievements in the Internet. They are part of the thousands of outstanding Chinese scientific and technological talents who have shown their talents in the field or started businesses in technology. "In fact, there are now more than 2,000 Silicon Valley companies controlled by Chinese, accounting for 1/5 of Silicon Valley companies, while Chinese from mainland China. More and more. Konka, China's major TV manufacturer, and Lenovo Group, a major computer company, have both established their own scientific research and experimental bases there.