A typical Busicom desk calculator

But a new Intel employee (Ted Hoff) convinced Busicom to instead accept a general purpose computer chip which, like all computers, could be reprogrammed for many different tasks (like controlling a keyboard, a display, a printer, etc.). Intel argued that since the chip could be reprogrammed for alternative purposes, the cost of developing it could be spread out over more users and hence would be less expensive to each user. The general purpose computer is adapted to each new purpose by writing a program which is a sequence of instructions stored in memory (which happened to be Intel's forte). Busicom agreed to pay Intel to design a general purpose chip and to get a price break since it would allow Intel to sell the resulting chip to others. But development of the chip took longer than expected and Busicom pulled out of the project. Intel knew it had a winner by that point and gladly refunded all of Busicom's investment just to gain sole rights to the device which they finished on their own.

Thus became the Intel 4004, the first microprocessor (uP). The 4004 consisted of 2300 transistors and was clocked at 108 kHz (i.e., 108, 000 times per second). Compare this to the 42 million transistors and the 2 GHz clock rate (i.e., 2, 000, 000, 000 times per second) used in a Pentium 4. One of Intel's 4004 chips still functions aboard the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, which is now the man-made object farthest from the earth. Curiously, Busicom went bankrupt and never ended up using the ground-breaking microprocessor.

Intel followed the 4004 with the 8008 and 8080. Intel priced the 8080 microprocessor at $360 dollars as an insult to IBM's famous 360 mainframe which cost millions of dollars. The 8080 was employed in the MITS Altair computer, which was the world's first personal computer (PC). It was personal all right: you had to build it yourself from a kit of parts that arrived in the mail. This kit didn't even include an enclosure and that is the reason the unit shown below doesn't match the picture on the magazine cover.

EXTRA

A Harvard freshman by the name of Bill Gates decided to drop out of college so he could concentrate all his time writing programs for this computer. This early experienced put Bill Gates in the right place at the right time once IBM decided to standardize on the Intel microprocessors for their line of PCs in 1981. The Intel Pentium 4 used in today's PCs is still compatible with the Intel 8088 used in IBM's first PC.

If you've enjoyed this history of computers, I encourage you to try your own hand at programming a computer. That is the only way you will really come to understand the concepts of looping, subroutines, high and low-level languages, bits and bytes, etc. I have written a number of Windows programs which teach computer programming in a fun, visually-engaging setting. I start my students on a programmable RPN calculator where we learn about programs, statements, program and data memory, subroutines, logic and syntax errors, stacks, etc. Then we move on to an 8051 microprocessor (which happens to be the most widespread microprocessor on earth) where we learn about microprocessors, bits and bytes, assembly language, addressing modes, etc. Finally, we graduate to the most powerful language in use today: C++ (pronounced " C plus plus"). These Windows programs are accompanied by a book's worth of on-line documentation which serves as a self-study guide, allowing you to teach yourself computer programming! The home page (URL) for this collection of software is www.computersciencelab.com.