Microprocessor

Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, Stanley Mazor, Intel, USA, patent 3,821,715 of 1974. A computer on one chip.

Overview

Intel's 4004, built for a Japanese calculator in 1971, crammed 2,300 transistors of CPU onto one die, patented 1974 as a memory system for a four-bit chip era. The 8008 and 8080 followed, and Gates and Allen wrote Altair BASIC for it. Faggin's buried-contact silicon-gate process made density possible. Patent fights stayed quiet; market wars wrote history. Every phone holds a descendant of the 4004's architecture. The microprocessor is the industrial revolution inside a fingernail.