The Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The term originally referred to the region's large number of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers, but eventually came to refer to all the high tech businesses in the area. Silicon Valley encompasses the northern part of Santa Clara Valley and adjacent communities in the southern parts of the San Francisco Peninsula and East Bay. It reaches approximately from Menlo Park (on the Peninsula) and the Fremont/Newark area in the East Bay down through San Jose, centered roughly on Sunnyvale. The Highway 17 corridor through the Santa Cruz Mountains into Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz County is sometimes considered a part of Silicon Valley.
The history of the Silicon Valley:

Strongest concentration of high technologies in the world. California will have known three “rushes”, towards the money, the most advantageous gold, and, towards silicon. With a single dynamism, even within the United States, it has been essential for more than twenty years like the epicentre of new technologies. It is estimated that California, entered only, would represent the seventh world economic power. This richness exploded after the second world war, thanks to the industry of “entertainment”, in California of the south, but especially through high technologies, in California of north. Stanford will have been the center of this revolution, by the quality of its scientific dies, which left 15 Nobel Prize, the first Internet network (which connected Stanford and UCLA in 1969), etc Plus important still remains its role of entrepreneurial fish pond, the pioneers of Hewlett-Packard, or Apple having been born from this environment, which while developing also accelerated the rise of actors like Cisco System, Intel or Siebel. 20% of the first hundred companies high tech in the world are originating in this zone of 80 km (the distance between San Francisco and San Jose). Valley is indeed remarkable by its density - approximately 7000 companies are installed there. That explains at the same time its single character and the difficulties of a practical nature,Some French, since the precursors like Jean-Louis Gassée or Eric Benhamou with the last arrived like Jerome Rota, marked and continue to build the history of the high tech in California. But there exists, of course, still many chapters to be written. The ace of April 2001 shook the valley very hard, concerning as well the most prestigious companies, that young growths ,However, beyond the accidents of the economic situation, the valley remains and will remain still a long time the heart of new technologies, because it has a history, an incomparable “ecosystem” and by its capacity to attract the best scientists and technicians of the world.