The Microprocessor
In 1968, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce left Fairchild Semiconductor to form Intel, which focused initially on memory. Their first product, the 3101 Schottky bipolar random access memory (RAM) was released in 1969. A Japanese calculator manufacturer named Busicom asked Intel to make a chip set they had designed for a desktop calculator. Engineer Ted Hoff was assigned to the task, which used 12 separate chips. Hoff decided that a programmable chip would work better. At Intel, Hoff had access to a new silicon gate process that was capable of higher densities than other semiconductor manufacturing techniques. By combining the calculator application with the new process, he was able to build the world’s first microprocessor. By 1971, the 4004 microprocessor was in production and released to the marketplace.

The microprocessor market soon became a popular one, with AMD becoming a viable competitor to Intel when it was founded in 1969, and Sun Microsystems developing the Sparc chip for its workstations.

Launching a Revolution
In 1974, Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems (MITS) introduced a computer “kit” called the Altair, which sold for less than $400. The year before, a Harvard student named Bill Gates developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the Altair. Gates would subsequently leave Harvard to form Microsoft in 1975 with childhood friend Paul Allen. Gates was guided by a belief that the computer would be a valuable tool on every office desktop and in every home.

As the decade continued, other companies followed MITS in the personal computer market, including Tandy Corporation (Radio Shack), which introduced their first model in 1977. The computer featured a keyboard and a cathode-ray display terminal. It also could be programmed, and the user could store information using a cassette tape. In the mid-1970s Commodore International released the Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor), which came completely assembled. Five years later, the company would introduce what would become one of the best-selling computers ever, the Commodore 64, which could be plugged into a television set for video gaming. The Commodore 64 helped revolutionize home entertainment.

Then, in 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak decided to form a company to sell a computer kit that was hand-built in Jobs’ parents’ garage. The kit was shown at the Homebrew Computer Club, where Wozniak frequently attended meetings. Eventually, they built 200 computers, which were sold as a motherboard with a CPU, RAM, and basic text and video chips, and users had to assemble the computer. Wozniak sold 50 units to a local computer store, which paid $500 each. The computer was called the Apple I, and Apple Computer was incorporated in 1977.

The Apple II was introduced that year, and featured color graphics and an open architecture, selling for about $1,300. A year later, Apple introduced a new computer called Lisa, the first commercially available computer to use a graphical user interface (GUI), which had been inspired by Xerox Corporation’s Alto computer. The GUI enabled users to interface with their computers by selecting graphical symbols from the display screen instead of typing commands. Lisa, however, had a hefty price tag and a slow operating system, which kept it from becoming a commercial success. Even so, Apple dominated the home computer market through the end of the 1970s.

Then, on August 12, 1981, IBM released the Personal Computer (PC), complete with a brand new operating system from Microsoft called MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) 1.0. Both the computer and its operating system would become industry standards and revolutionize computing for mainstream users and consumers.