Silicon Valley, an area located in northern California, is the modern global center of high technology. Home to household names like Apple, Google, and Facebook, it is truly astonishing and groundbreaking to see how the startups in Silicon Valley have shapeshifted our lives and influenced society and government decisions. In order to give our readers a more coherent understanding of this, in this article, we will dive into the past and present of Silicon Valley, as well as how exactly Silicon Valley became, wellSilicon Valley.
Silicon Valley is infamous for its high-tech corporations, and its roots date back to 1975 when political activist Fred Moore and computer engineer Gordon French started The Homebrew Computer Club in Menlo Park, California. The club published newsletters and hosted gatherings between computer enthusiasts, where members will trade computer parts and their expertise on computer gadgets. Members of this club went on to set tech startups and become professional hackers in the area. Two of these individuals are Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who later on founded Apple together in 1976. Hence, many regard this club as the birth of Silicon Valley, setting the cultural foundation of tech companies and influencing the technological revolution in the late 20th century.
As the years went on, Silicon Valley began to attract the public’s interest. Venture capital and law firms joined the area to help the high-tech industry legally and commercially. It wasn’t long before the area reached its first public sensation in 1977 when Apple Inc. launched its second product - the Apple ll - the first computer that was able to display color graphics. The successful launch revolutionized the use of computers worldwide, becoming more popular both in the workforce and as a household product. It also caught investors’ attention from all over the world, with Apple Computer grossing over $1.3 billion when it went public in late 1980.
Throughout the 1980s, notable inventions were made by researchers in the Valley that are still being used today, which continued to fuel the booming market of high technology. Stanford University, a prestigious university located 15 minutes south of the Valley, contributed greatly to the research of computer science during the 1980s. Inventor Doug Engelbart and René Sommer invented the computer mouse and hypertext (website links) in the Stanford Research Institute. With many of the students from their Computer Science department working in the Valley after graduation, Stanford University contributed significantly to the rapid development in the late 1900s. The Xerox’ Research Center inPalo Alto created the laser printer, programming languages, and the Ethernet, all of which are crucial pieces to computers and the Internet we know of today. These groundbreaking developments were slowly picked up by the government and businesses, generalizing this newfound technology amongst citizens.
By the 1990s, internet startups of every industry, websites including Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Netflix emerged, leading to excessive speculation and the dot com bubble. During this time, investors from all over the world pitched in every time a tech company launched on the stock market, pulling in millions of dollars to startups in Silicon Valley. And even after the bubble’s burst in 2002, it didn’t stop Silicon Valley’s companies from taking over the stock market and our daily abouts in the 21st century.
Silicon Valley remains a reputable top research and manufacturing center, an investment hub, with currently over 220,000 high tech jobs. Silicon Valley has drastically shaped production, education, information, and communication amongst us in the modern-day, with technology playing an essential aspect in our daily lives.
By: Quenifer Lung
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