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Just as Manchester was once the center forindustrial progress， the microelectronics industry also has a heartland．Silicon Valley is located in a thirty by ten miles strip between San Francisco and San Jose，California．

Now the Valley is famous，but it didn't even have a name for its first twenty years．It was referred to，somewhat clumsily as \" the West Coast electronics industry '' or as \" Santa Clara County \" . But Silicon Valley didn't need a name in those years because the industry was still small and unknown．

During the 1950s， the region benefited from postwarwestward migration of skills and ideas.Anumber of enterprisingengineers becamethefirstgeneration of garage-era pioneers. Then the tide was about to turn from agriculture and foodprocessing to instruments and components and some graduates of Professor Terman (who is called the father of the Valley) and later Stanford University's industrial park (1954) were going to change the course of the Valley forever.

The economy was evolving into its second incarnationbythe early 1960s. In this decade， technologychanged from transistorsto integrated circuits， and the mainframe computer hit the scene in full force. This was the era of space-age innovators and spin-offs. The Valley grew a lot in production and employment. The boomintheexpandingsectors served as a magnet for more skills， making the region more attractiveas alocation forbusiness development. New venture capital firms were attracted to the Valley. Stanford Industrial Park filled， and the North-South Valley axis expanded with tilt-up concrete facilities.Housing and apartments boomed too.

In 1971 Don C．Hoefler，an editor ofMicroelectronics News， coined the name \"Silicon Valley \". It was cute and it made sense．Semiconductor chips，made of silicon，are the fundamental product of the local high-technology industries and although the area isn't a valley in a strictgeographical sense，most of the firms are located on level ground bounded onoppositesidesby a range of hills and by San Francisco Bay．So with a little imagination it is a valley．There was a peak of new enterprise formation in 1970s.Many famous enterprises came into existence and employment growth accelerated.Largejumpsalso occurred in services and trade. RD was rising in localuniversities， and venture capital firms increased in this region.

The 1980s witnessed the formation of the third and fourth generation of Silicon Valley enterprises.The region's driving technology shiftedtohigher-performancecomponents andapplication-specific integratedcircuits， higher-performance computers(workstations)， and new communications systems (local area networks). Defense investment in some companies， particularly through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency helped seed new software and hardware developments. Corporate RD levels grew slowly but venture capital peaked in the period. This was a decade that started with the peak of inflation in 1980 (18%)， followed by the recession of 1981.Foreign direct investment accelerated in the region. Strategic alliances and partnerships significantly increased as a means of enhancing competitiveness in global markets for Valley companies. By mid-decade， economicrestructuring had started. Many Valley companies had been hard hit by competition from overseas companies. As they adapted， companies moved the majority of theircommodity productionto low-cost sites close to the Silicon Valley， such as Roseville or Portland， or to Southeast Asia. The region became increasingly filled with conflicts like environment， transportation and housing problems.

The 1990s was full of ups and downs in the Valley. The new economy boomed and then was shattered. Many companies in the valley broke down and capital venture firms were forced to confront high risks.

In the new century， the Valley is facing new challenges from other countries but it is stilladreamplaceforthetalented people from all over the world.