Microprocessor was first invented by the scientists Gordan Moore and Robert Noyce.
In 1968, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore were two unhappy engineers working for the Fairchild Semiconductor Company who decided to quit and create their own company at a time when many Fairchild employees were leaving to create start-ups. So these two engineers decided to name their start up Intel (formerly known as Integrated electronics) - today's leading semiconductor giant.
In 1968, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore were two unhappy engineers working for the Fairchild Semiconductor Company who decided to quit and create their own company at a time when many Fairchild employees were leaving to create start-ups. So these two engineers decided to name their start up Intel (formerly known as Integrated electronics) - today's leading semiconductor giant.
Ted Hoff, a young scientist at Intel, was assigned to work with minicomputers and in June, 1968, he was asked to join a group of Japanese engineers from a company called Busicom. They had approached Intel for a design of small calculator.
Hoff initially struggled with the design for a while, but eventually decided there had to be a better way. He felt that programming through read-only memory and general-purpose registers could replace the separate (i.e. discrete) components the Busicom engineers had requested. When he presented his idea to Intel's then chairman, Robert Noyce, the boss was enthusiastic. It took another nine months before a team of Intel engineers, led by Frederico Faggin, could turn Hoff's ideas into hardware.
The original chip 4004 was a silicon-based chip measuring 1/8th of an inch long by 1/16th of an inch wide, containing either 2,108 or 2,300 transistors. It had about the same amount of computing power as the original ENIAC which weighed 30 tons, occupied 3,000 cubic feet of space and used 18,000 vacuum tubes. Now this marked the beginning of modern era of semiconductor.
The first microprocessors were industrial controllers, says Hoff. No one really thought of using them in computers. Instead, they wound up as embedded controllers in things like automated gas pumps, traffic controllers and manufacturing pressure and flow meters. In the 1970s refinements in integrated circuit technology led to the development of the modern microprocessor, integrated circuits that contained thousands of transistors. Today's modern microprocessors contain billions and it has seeded a revolution in the electronics market.