History Of The Microcomputer Revolution
Computers began to get smaller in the 1960's with the introduction of Digital
Equipment Corporation's Minicomputers. These DEC minicomputers went on
to play an interesting part in the Microcomputer Revolution and I'll tell
you about that later, but minicomputers were still designed for businesses,
not people.
Advances in electronics brought about the microcomputer revolution. The
room-sized first mainframe computer - the ENIAC - was replaced by the technology
of the transistor, invented by engineers working at Bell Laboratories in
the early 1950's. William Shockley is credited as the co-inventor of the
transistor, and he left Bell in 1956 to form his own company, Shockley
Semiconductor Laboratories, in what was to become California's Silicon
Valley.
One of the engineers working for him in his new company was a young man
named Robert Noyce, a talented individual from a small town in Iowa. Noyce
and several other engineers soon left Shockley to form a new company, Fairchild
Electronics, financed by a venture capitalist. While working at Fairchild,
Noyce came up with the idea for the integrated circuit around 1959, and
is credited as its inventor. He worked his way to become manager of the
Fairchild operation, but he longed to own and operate his own company.
In 1968 Noyce and another engineer, Gordon Moore, left Fairchild to start
their own electronics firm, which they named the Intel Corporation. The
company started with 12 employees and their first year revenues were $
2,672.00. Now, over a quarter century later, Intel's innovations have changed
the world.
Intel focused initially on making semiconductor computer memory - practical
and affordable. Within a year, Intel had rolled out its first product -
the 3101 64-bit memory chip. Intel continued to successfully develop memory
chips, but in 1971 the event happened which changed the world and launched
the microcomputer revolution.
A Japanese calculator company named Busicom had approached Intel back in
1969 about designing a set of chips for a programmable calculator and had
advanced Intel $ 60,000. Their original design had called for multiple
custom chips, but Ted Hoff, a young Intel engineer, thought it was too
complex. His solution was to develop a single-chip, general purpose logic
device which would retrieve its instructions from semiconductor memory.
He envisioned this solution to enable an off-the-shelf processor to handle
many different functions, and eliminate a lot of custom circuit design.
Hoff's vision was transformed into silicon by a team of engineers and designers,
and within several months the Intel 4004 microprocessor was created. 1/8"wide
and 1/6"long, and consisting of 2300 transistors, this revolutionary computer
on a tiny chip had as much computing power as its ancient great-grandfather,
the room-sized ENIAC. Intel decided to buy the rights to this product back
from the Japanese company, which had run into financial problems - and
the rest - as they say - is history.
The Intel 4004 was introduced by the end of 1971, sold for $ 200, and was
followed less than a year later by the 8008, an 8-bit microprocessor which
sold for $ 360. For the first time, affordable computer power was available
to everyone.
Next week we'll learn how the Intel 8008 caught
the attention of a couple Seattle high school kids, and how they fit into
the microcomputer revolution.
For Raw Bytes, this is Frank Delaney
Copyright © 1995 MTA Micro Technology Associates
Frank Delaney
928 E. Thurston Spokane, WA 99203 (509) 624-7286/7230
Raw Bytes Computer News - KPBX FM 91.1 National Public Radio
In computer news this week (February 15, 1995):
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Copyright © 1997-2006 William Thomas Sanderson.
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Frank Delaney
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