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Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

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The San Francisco Bay Area Portal

California Bay Area county map
California Bay Area county map

The San Francisco Bay Area (referred to locally as the Bay Area) is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses the major cities and metropolitan areas of San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland, along with smaller urban and rural areas. The Bay Area's nine counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. Home to approximately 7.68 million people, the nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a network of roads, highways, railroads, bridges, tunnels, and commuter rail. The combined statistical area of the region is the second-largest in California (after the Greater Los Angeles area), the fifth-largest in the United States, and the 43rd-largest urban area in the world with 8.80 million people.

The Bay Area has the second-most Fortune 500 companies in the United States, after the New York metropolitan area, and is known for its natural beauty, liberal politics, entrepreneurship, and diversity. The area ranks second in highest density of college graduates, after the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and performs above the state median household income in the 2010 census; it includes the five highest California counties by per capita income and two of the top 25 wealthiest counties in the United States. Based on a 2013 population report from the California Department of Finance, the Bay Area is the only region in California where the rate of people migrating in from other areas in the United States is greater than the rate of those leaving the region, led by Alameda and Contra Costa counties. (more...)

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The first prototype of a computer mouse, as designed by Bill English from Engelbart's sketches.
The first prototype of a computer mouse, as designed by Bill English from Engelbart's sketches.
The Mother of All Demos is a name given retrospectively to Douglas Engelbart's December 9, 1968, computer demonstration at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. The live demonstration featured the introduction of a complete computer hardware—software system called the oN-Line System or more commonly, NLS. The 90-minute presentation essentially demonstrated almost all the fundamental elements of modern personal computing: windows, hypertext, graphics, efficient navigation and command input, video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing, dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor (collaborative work). Engelbart's presentation was the first to publicly demonstrate all these elements in a single system. The demonstration was highly influential and spawned similar projects at Xerox PARC in the early 1970s. The underlying technologies influenced both the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows graphical user interface operating systems in the 1980s and 1990s. (more...)

Selected biography

Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American photographer and environmentalist. His black-and-white landscape photographs of the American West, especially Yosemite National Park, have been widely reproduced on calendars, posters, and in books.

With Fred Archer, Adams developed the Zone System as a way to determine proper exposure and adjust the contrast of the final print. The resulting clarity and depth characterized his photographs. Adams primarily used large-format cameras because their high resolution helped ensure sharpness in his images.

Adams founded the photography Group f/64 along with fellow photographers Willard Van Dyke and Edward Weston. (more...)

Selected city

Sunnyvale (/ˈsʌnivl/ or /ˈsʌnivəl/), officially the City of Sunnyvale, is a city located in Santa Clara County, California. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 140,095.

The city is one of the major cities that make up the Silicon Valley located in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is the seventh most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sunnyvale is bordered by portions of San Jose to the north, Moffett Federal Airfield to the northwest, Mountain View to the west, Los Altos to the southwest, Cupertino to the south, and Santa Clara to the east. It lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101.

As part of the Silicon Valley, high-tech companies such as Juniper Networks, Fortinet, AMD, NetApp, Spansion, Yahoo!, AppliedMicro and Ariba are headquartered there. Sunnyvale is also home to several aerospace/defense companies; Lockheed Martin has a major facility in Sunnyvale, and Honeywell, Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems - Marine Systems (formerly Joshua Hendy Iron Works), Finisar, and Spirent also have offices in Sunnyvale. Sunnyvale was also the home to Onizuka Air Force Station, where its memorial building was locally known as the Blue Cube. The base, named for the deceased Space Shuttle Challenger astronaut Ellison Onizuka, was an artificial satellite control facility of the United States armed forces until August 2010. (more...)

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Fireworks over San Francisco Bay from Yerba Buena Island
image credit: Marcin Wichary


The Bay Area by year

1935
Woman with a Hat, from the SFMOMA collection
Woman with a Hat, from the SFMOMA collection
Former capitol building, Benicia
Former capitol building, Benicia
1941 trolleybus model
1941 trolleybus model

 • The San Francisco Museum of Art opens at the War Memorial Veterans Building on Van Ness Avenue in the Civic Center (Woman with a Hat by Matisse, from the museum collection, pictured, left)
 • Benjamin Franklin Davis, grandson of the man who helped develop Levi's jeans, opens his eponymous clothing store in San Francisco
 • Benicia Capitol State Historic Park opens at the site of California’s third capital building (pictured, right), where the California State Legislature convened from February 3, 1853 to February 24, 1854
 • San Francisco Junior College is established
 • Lucky Stores is founded in Alameda County
 • Trolleybuses (pictured, right) begin operating in San Francisco

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Did you know...

San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds
San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds

Previous Did you know...

Stone fireplace at Live Oak Park
Stone fireplace at Live Oak Park
Eugene Tsui
Eugene Tsui
Third and Townsend Depot
Third and Townsend Depot

 • ... that Live Oak Park is one of Berkeley's oldest and most naturalistic public parks? (park fireplace pictured)
 • ... that Eugene Tsui's Ojo del Sol house is based upon the world's most indestructible living creature, the tardigrade? (architect pictured)
 • ... that Sutter Cinema's owner/manager Arlene Elster was the first, if not the only, woman to operate an adult theater?
 • ... that Sarah Althea Hill became a national celebrity when she sued millionaire senator William Sharon for divorce in 1883, claiming to have secretly married him three years earlier by private contract?
 • ... that the Third and Townsend Depot (pictured) was built in 1914 for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition?

March 2015

Selected periodic event

Dr.Dog at the 2008 festival
Dr.Dog at the 2008 festival

Treasure Island Music Festival is an annual two day music festival that takes place on Treasure Island. The first day of the festival consists of electronica and hip hop/rap influenced performers while the second day consists of rock and indie rock influenced performers. (Dr. Dog pictured)

Quote

~ Mario Savio, speech, Sproul Hall, University of California, Berkeley, 1964, during the Free Speech Movement

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Bay Area regions, geographic features and protected areas

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