Intel Releases the 4004, the First Commercial Microprocessor

Date

1971

Category

Science, technology & invention

Region

North America (United States)

Era

Contemporary

Significance

Intel Releases the 4004, the First Commercial Microprocessor (1971) was a landmark science, technology & invention development in North America (United States).

The first general-purpose commercial microprocessor went on sale on 15 November 1971, when Intel introduced the 4-bit 4004 with a magazine ad announcing "a new era of integrated electronics." Designed by Ted Hoff, Stan Mazor and Federico Faggin—originally to power a Japanese Busicom calculator—the chip packed an entire central processing unit onto a single sliver of silicon using MOS silicon-gate technology, matching the computing power of room-sized 1940s machines for about sixty dollars. By collapsing the processor into one mass-producible component, the 4004 made computing cheap, small and ubiquitous, seeding the personal-computer, embedded-systems and eventual smartphone revolutions. Its architecture established the template every later processor would follow, and its commercial success launched Intel toward industry dominance. Few single products have reshaped the modern economy so thoroughly; the microprocessor became the foundational engine of the digital age, embedding programmable intelligence into everything from cars to appliances. The 4004 is now enshrined in museums as the ancestor of the trillions of processors manufactured since.

Empires active in 1971

• Soviet Union
  1922 CE – 1991 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Solomonic dynasty
  1270 CE – 1974 CE
• Dutch Empire
  1581 CE – 1975 CE

Related science, technology & invention events

• The Apple II Launches the Personal Computer Era
  1977
• Invention of the integrated circuit
  1958–1959
• Invention of the transistor at Bell Labs
  December 1947
• Ray Tomlinson Sends Networked Email and Chooses the @ Symbol
  1971
• First ARPANET message, precursor of the Internet
  29 October 1969
• IBM Launches the Personal Computer
  1981

Further reading

A Little History of Science

The wider story

A Little History of Science

William Bynum

Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.

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