Silicon Valley

Michael Dauchy

GEOG 1010-B

Dennis Geffert

11/29/15

Computers and Geography

Computers have changed to world in so many ways. They have connected the entire world economically, geographically, and socially. Ideas that would take months to send and receive now takes only seconds. A major company and location comes to mind when computers are talked about, Apple and Silicon Valley. Apple is a company known for its electronics and it got its start in the Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley has a long history and geography is a major influence to both Silicon Valley and other locations in the world.

Silicon Valley is an area in California around twenty five miles long, from Palo Alto to San Jose. The name Silicon Valley is named after a major component for computer chips, Silicon (Silicon Valley (2)). Silicon Valley was started up because of Stanford University having financial problems. Fred Terman leased some of the university’s land to high-tech companies for 99 years. Because of the lease, many businesses and ideas started and over time more and more people flocked to the area (Silicon Valley (3)).

Alfred Marshall pointed out the importance of finding a location for business:

When an industry has chosen a locality for itself, it is likely to stay there long; so great are the advantages which people following the same skilled trade get from near neighbourhood to one another. The mysteries of the trade become no mysteries; but are as it were in the air, and children learn many of them unconsciously. Good work is appreciated, inventions and improvements in machinery, in processes and the general organization of the business have their merits promptly discussed; if one man starts a new idea, it is taken up by others and combined with suggestions of their own; and thus it becomes the source of further new ideas. And presently subsidiary trades grow up in the neighbourhood, supplying it with implements and materials, organizing its traffic, and in many ways conducing...