# Don Hoefler **Domain:** Technology Journalism / Silicon Valley History **Doc Type:** Historical Person Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition **Don C. Hoefler** was a technology journalist whose 1971 _Electronic News_ series “Silicon Valley U.S.A.” supplied the regional name that entered common use. ## Nexus Context Hoefler also documented the semiconductor family tree descending from Shockley and Fairchild. [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] uses his naming work to connect public mythology with an actual institutional genealogy. Names compress histories. “Silicon Valley” foregrounds a material and an industry while backgrounding military research, universities, ecology, Indigenous land, labor and biological science. Hoefler's phrase is useful precisely because the nexus can now reopen what it compressed. ## Sources / Provenance - Computer History Museum, Silicon Valley naming history: https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/digital-logic/12/328 - Computer History Museum, Fairchild genealogy: https://computerhistory.org/blog/fairchild-and-the-fairchildren/ ## See Also [[wiki/Silicon Valley|Silicon Valley]], [[wiki/Fairchildren|Fairchildren]], [[wiki/Public Mythology|Public Mythology]], [[wiki/Technical Archaeology|Technical Archaeology]]