Destination Guides > North America > USA > West Coast > California > San Jose & Silicon Valley
San Jose & Silicon Valley
San Jose and Silicon Valley south of San Francisco are known around the world as a hub for technology industries.
The garage where Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started their electronics business (Hewlett-Packard) is considered to be the birthplace of Silicon Valley but it is Stanford University that gets credit for Silicon Valley's rise as a technology centre. After World War II Stanford University set up Stanford Industrial Park - later renamed Stanford Research Park - for Stanford graduates to base their business technology ventures. Stanford Industrial Park's first tenant was Varian Associates and it was soon joined by Hewlett-Packard, which outgrew the garage in Palo Alto that it was founded in.
Silicon Valley has seen many technological breakthroughs including the development of the silicon transistor in 1953, the mouse in the mid-1960s, the graphical user interface (invented by Xerox, popularised by Apple and now used by most operating systems), the laser printer (also invented by Xerox) and the PDA (invented by Apple but popularised by Palm). In fact 10 of America's 20 most-inventive cities are in Silicon Valley with San Jose filing more patent applications than any other city in the United States and nearby Sunnyvale coming in at number two. The intense concentration of high tech industries has seen many companies start up in Silicon Valley including Adobe, Apple, Cisco, eBay, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Intuit, Palm, Silicon Graphics, Xerox and Yahoo!
San Jose, at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, is the biggest city in Silicon Valley with over 1.5 million inhabitants and most of Silicon Valley's visitor attractions are located here and in neighbouring Santa Clara. However the Valley has many other important centres including Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park (the world's biggest concentration of venture capital firms), as well as the downtown areas of Stanford, Sunnyvale and Palo Alto.
Practical Information
San Jose Visitor Information Center
San José McEnery Convention Center, 125 S Market Street, San Jose, CA 95113
Bus 85, DASH Light Rail Convention Center
Tel (408) 792-4173
Website www.sanjoseca.gov/visitors.html
Open Mon-Fri 8am-5.30pm
Santa Clara Visitor Information Center
1850 Warburton Avenue, Santa Clara, CA 95050
Bus 32
Tel 1800 272 6822
Website www.santaclara.org
INTERNET ACCESS
As you can expect, Silicon Valley is a wired town and internet access is everywhere, but it is much easier to find wireless access for your notebook than a conventional internet café.
Euphnet - San Jose
1409 W San Carlos Street, Suite 200, San Jose, CA 95126
Bus 23, 63, 85
Tel (408) 271 2844
Website www.euphnet.com
Open Mon-Thu noon-2am, Fri-Sat noon-4am, Sun noon-2am
Euphnet - Sunnyvale
612 S Mary Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94087
Bus 22
Tel (408) 733 3712
Website www.euphnet.com
Open Mon-Thu noon-2am, Fri-Sat noon-4am, Sun noon-2am
There are loads of places with free wi-fi connections throughout Silicon Valley so you don't need to look far if you're travelling with your own computer. Many public areas in Cupertino, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale and downtown San Jose have free wi-fi access provided by MetroFi (website www.metrofi.com) and AnchorFree (website http://anchorfree.com/hotzones/palo-alto/) operate a free wi-fi hotzone in along University Avenue (between High Street and Middlefield Road) in Palo Alto.
