Happy 50th birthday to the name “Silicon Valley”

Fifty years ago — on Jan. 11, 1971 — journalist Don Hoefler started a three-part series in Electronic News about the Bay Area semiconductor industry titled “Silicon Valley U.S.A.” It marked the first time the phrase was used in print, and though Hoefler couldn’t know it at the time, he did something rare: He created a wholly new place, one that has grown beyond its geographic boundaries into our consciousness.

Happy birthday, “Silicon Valley” — a phrase that has become simultaneously the cause and solution to seemingly all of society’s ills, a place that exists in a near future that’s utopian or dystopian, depending on your point of view.

Hoefler, who died at age 63 in 1986, didn’t come up with the phrase on his own. It reportedly blossomed from a conversation he had with Ralph Vaerst, then-president of Ion Equipment, and it’s said to have been used by East Coasters for a while to refer to the South Bay’s bourgeoning tech industry. The valley in question is the Santa Clara Valley — until then an agricultural haven known as “The Valley of Heart’s Delight” — and silicon is the element that was the primary building block of integrated circuits, which were being manufactured by valley companies like Fairchild, Intel and National Semiconductor. Can you imagine the parallel universe where germanium or tin proved to work better?

In the 1960s and ’70s, the valley’s spacious land began to fill up with startups and tilt-ups radiated around Palo Alto and stretching south through Sunnyvale and Mountain View to North San Jose. As the largest city in the region, San Jose grabbed onto the moniker of “Capital of Silicon Valley,” knowing if it didn’t, another city like San Francisco surely would. Christopher Walken’s tech-obsessed villain in the 1985 James Bond movie “A View to a Kill” plotted to “end the dominance of Silicon Valley” with an earthquake-induced flood, and by 2014, the region got its own nerdy show on HBO.

Along the way, something strange happened: Silicon Valley managed to devour San Jose. It’s doubtful someone outside California could point out the nation’s 10th largest city on a map, but ask them to find “Silicon Valley” and they’ll probably nail it on the first try. Companies, nonprofits and performing arts groups saw where the marketing winds were blowing and added “Silicon Valley” to their names, usually a precursor to dropping “San Jose,” which had become the cumbersome part of the “Silicon Valley/San Jose” partnership. There was even talk for a while of adding Silicon Valley to Mineta San Jose International Airport, I suppose so tech tourists wouldn’t find themselves accidentally in Costa Rica.

Former San Jose Mayor Tom McEnery, who served in city government as “Silicon Valley” was gaining steam from the 1970s into the ’90s, doesn’t see it that way, though.

“I don’t think Silicon Valley has inhibited San Jose at all,” he said. “I think the meaning of Silicon Valley is exactly the same as San Jose. It’s not really a geographic place, it’s an idea. The idea is the same one that (Luis) Peralta had when he walked from Mexico to come to San Jose and build a new life. There was just a feeling that all things are possible here.”

The name changes, McEnery says, are just marketing efforts to make something people don’t think is important, sound important. “I happen to think the name ‘San Jose’ is pretty spectacular,” he said. “Santa Clara Valley is spectacular, too. And Silicon Valley is as well.”

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These days, “Silicon Valley” is a catch-all for all the technology — used for good or ill — that makes up our modern world, whether it’s social media, smartphones, 3D printers or search engines. We don’t even make silicon chips here anymore, but the app developers and software designers are still finding their way to this imaginary place we call home.