Silicon Valley

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Silicon Valley is a nickname for the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area coined by journalist Don C. Hoefler in 1971. It encompasses the Santa Clara Valley and southern half of the San Francisco Peninsula. It reaches approximately from Menlo Park, California down to San Jose, centered roughly on Sunnyvale. It was named "Silicon" for the high concentration of semiconductor and computer related industry in the area, and "Valley" for the Santa Clara Valley. The term may also be applied to surrounding areas on both sides of the bay into which many of these industries have expanded.

For many years in the 1970s and 1980s it was also incorrectly called "Silicone Valley", mostly by journalists, before the name became commonplace in American culture.

Thousands of technology companies are located in Silicon Valley. Notable ones include (in alphabetic order):

Cities include (in alphabetic order):

Hoping to emulate the economic success of Silicon Valley, many cities, regions, and nations around the world have attempted to develop their own dense high tech areas, usually with informal names incorporating the words "Silicon" or "Valley". In some cases the names are developed by governments for marketing purposes, while others are coined by journalists. In a few cases, such as "Silicon Prairie", there are multiple claimants to the name entangled in legal disputes.

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