The Silicon Valley is the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. Journalist Don Hoefler first coined the term in 1971. Silicon is a component of semi-conductors and computer chips. Since the 1970s and earlier, the area has been the headquarters of many high tech companies, among them Apple, Google, and Intel.

San Jose is the largest city in the Valley by far, with around a million residents. It’s the tenth most populous city in the United States. San Jose considers itself the Capital of the Silicon Valley, but Stanford University’s home of Palo Alto is where the first technology research park was founded.

Originally, the San Francisco Bay was the site of the Navy’s west coast operations, and many government contractors set up shop in the area. The Navy has since moved it’s operations to San Diego, but NASA moved in, meaning many contractors stayed and other aerospace companies moved in.

Frederick Terman was a professor at Stanford University who decided to take advantage of the already high-tech climate of the area. He set up a program to encourage students to stay in the area by enabling them to use empty Stanford land. William Hewlett and David Packard, were two students who took advantage of the program, and in 1939, they founded Hewlett-Packard.

The program was expanded in 1951 to become what is now Stanford Research Park. It is essentially an office park for high tech companies. Currently, this type of technology incubator is common, but it was revolutionary at the time.

By the early 1970s there were many semiconductor and computer companies in the area, and the area has exploded since, as new innovators move in and infant companies break off from more established businesses.

The Silicon Valley has a Mediterranean climate tempered by the presence of the San Francisco Bay. It’s a little drier than the Bay Area, getting 20-30 inches of rain a year, and manages to avoid the fog that often blankets San Francisco. About 300 days each year are sunny here.

Temperatures are usually pretty moderate. January’s average high is 59 °F and average low is 42 °, with overnight freezes several nights each year. July’s average high is 84 °F and average low is 58 °F, with heat exceeding 100 °F several days each year.