On January 11, 1971, “Silicon Valley” appears for the first time in print in the Electronic News, a popular weekly trade magazine. The article, the first of a three-part series, was written by veteran electronics columnist Don Hoefler and chronicles the rise of the semiconductor industry in Northern California’s Santa Clara Valley. Its headline: “Silicon Valley U.S.A.”
Hoefler’s piece circulated among the semiconductor industry’s biggest players of the time, and the term “Silicon Valley” soon became popularized.
“The rationale was simple enough: These revolutionary semiconductors are made in a valley, from silicon—not silicone, please—the second most-abundant chemical element (after oxygen) on Earth,” Hoefler wrote in a 1981 San Jose Mercury News article. “How was I to know that the term would quickly be adopted industry-wide, and finally become generic worldwide?”
Hoefler left the Electronic News to start his own industry newsletter called the Microelectronic News, where he chronicled everything from corporate gossip to failed product launches in the valley he was responsible for naming. He passed away in 1986.
Decades later, the iconic name has come to mean far more than just a valley where semiconductors made of silicon are produced. “Silicon Valley” has become synonymous with innovation and some of the biggest tech giants in the world, including Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Oracle and Meta (the parent company of Facebook), which call the valley home.
