The Silicon Valley and technology park

Santa Clara Valley is one of the world’s most fertile regions in California, America’s entrepreneurial state. A 33 by 15km strip of land in the northern corridor of the Santa Clara Valley is now a day’s called the Silicon Valley it was discovered by Stanford’s Nobel laureate Dr. William Shockley, the inventor of the transistor.

It is called Silicon Valley because of a specially formed crystal of common beach sand, which can be cultivated to be reborn as a silicon chip. This beach sand has enabled this part to have explosive growth from agriculture to electronics. In the development of its potential Stanford University played a major role by providing a technology park.

It lent money to young engineers, gave them excellent facilities, procured government contracts for technical research and invited professional engineers to sit in classes. All these enabled the electronic industry and computer technology to make very rapid strides within a very short duration.

The Time magazine traditionally reserved its New Year cover for the “man of the year”, “the individual who had the most impact on the course of events”. In 1983 this magazine made a departure from this time-honored practice by choosing a computer to grace its New Year cover and called it the “machine of the year”.

In the mid-sixties, a single silicon chip replaced an entire board of transistors. These chips are made from a cultured silicon crystal about the size of a soft drink bottle. After the crystal is formed it is sliced into multiple wafers, which are then cut apart into individual chips containing one complete circuit apiece. Until 1971 a computer consisted of numerous sets of chips each dedicated to specific functions.

Virtually unknown at the beginning of World War II, computers have ushered in a ‘new industrial revolution’ after the 1950s. it promises to free men’s minds from routine tasks as machines of the first industrial revolution freed men’s muscles from taxing labour. Today millions of computers are employed throughout the world. The manufacture of computers has itself become a major industry.

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