Sipping Silicon Valley

Historically, Santa Clara Valley south of San Francisco was known for orchards, farms, and vineyards (today it has just  1,500 acres of grapes, mainly cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay). But by the 1950s, it was already becoming known more for something more than almonds, tomatoes, prunes, apricots, plums, and vines—namely transistors and semi-conductors. In 1971, the term “Silicon Valley,” was coined by Don Hoefler, who used the phrase as the title of a series of articles in Electronic News.  The term Silicon Valley gained widespread use in the early 1980s, when the IBM PC and numerous related hardware and software products were introduced to the consumer market. Silicon is used to create most semiconductors commercially.