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.
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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