# Silicon Valley The colloquial name for the southern San Francisco Bay Area of California, centered on Santa Clara Valley, which became the global epicenter of semiconductor and technology innovation. The region's identity traces directly to [[wiki/William Shockley|William Shockley]]'s decision to locate [[wiki/Shockley Semiconductor|Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory]] in [[wiki/Mountain View|Mountain View]] in 1956, physically transplanting [[wiki/Bell Labs|Bell Labs]] DNA to the San Francisco Peninsula. The subsequent defection of the [[wiki/Traitorous Eight|Traitorous Eight]] to found [[wiki/Fairchild Semiconductor|Fairchild Semiconductor]] seeded the entire ecosystem of semiconductor and computing companies — the [[wiki/Fairchildren|Fairchildren]] — that gave the valley both its name and its economic character. The genealogy is documented in [[articles/Bell Labs and the Distributed Architecture of American Power|Bell Labs and the Distributed Architecture of American Power]].