By Yuqing Pan | realtor.com
Like most of America’s true paradigm shifts, the growth of Silicon Valley’s tech industry started with lots of slow-burning embers—then exploded into a full-scale conflagration seemingly overnight. It took its name from the semiconductor businesses that seeded a patch of Northern California in the 1960s, attracting brainiacs from around the world. But the modern history of the place really began in 1976, when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak first huddled together in a stuffy Los Altos garage to invent a cool, affordable personal computer, the Apple I—and a company that borrowed its name.
Ever since, Silicon Valley has been the engine of tech innovation in the United States, powered by life-changing ideas, optimism, bushels of venture capital cash, and lots and lots of coders, engineers, and developers.
