Prehistory of Silicon Valley, from 1910 to 1965

The term ``Silicon Valley'' was coined in 1971, some six decades after the emergence of the San Francisco Bay Area as a center of innovation and invention in the fields of radio and electronics. The geographical position of San Francisco with respect to continental and Pacific transportation and communication needs; the growth of West Coast universities, markets, and population; the importation of talent from the East; innovative industrial and business methods--all these provided a thriving center of instrumentation, electronics, avionics, and high energy physics when Silicon arrived in the ``Valley of the Heart's Delight.''