Industrial strip, west-central California.
Located between San Jose and Palo Alto in the San Jose and Santa Clara valleys, its (unofficial) name derives from the extensive use of silicon in the region's electronics industries. The U.S. government invested heavily in the region's industry following World War II, a second economic surge occurred with the proliferation of personal computer s in the 1980s, and a third surge followed the growth of the Internet in the 1990s.