The Intel 4004 and the Economy

This advertisement from the Wall Street Journal in 1972 features the Busicom Handy LE120S, one of the first pocket-sized calculators. The desire to create a new line of calculators utilizing integrated circuits was what motivated the creation of the 4004. The compactness of this device, and all of the pocket-sized calculators to follow it, was made possible by commercially available microprocessors. The Handy LE120S in particular was one of the first devices to use the Intel 4004. 

Intel and Fairchild had a complicated history; two of the original "traitorous eight" (Gordon E. Moore and Robert Noyce) that founded Fairchild Semiconductors abandoned ship once again to form Intel. Federico Faggin, a Fairchild engineer with mass expertise in integrated circuits and silicon gate technology, brought his knowledge to Intel to help create the 4004. This patent deal, recorded in the Peninsula Times Tribune in February 1971, would have allowed for both companies to reap some financial benefits from the oncoming boom brought on by the 4004. 

A few months later, in October, the Peninsula Times Tribune reported on Intel's massive growth in 1971, the year the 4004 was released to the public: "Net sales for the first half of calendar 1971 were $3.9 million. The company had sales of $3.9 million for the entire year of 1970, Vian reported." 

This Economist article from 1976, though published five years and an ocean away from the release of the 4004, gives insight into how this microprocessor changed the global economy. The article discusses how computers are becoming "Tiny, Cheap, and Easy to use," thus removing them "out of the bad joke category" because of the 4004 and its progeny. It also goes on to predict how this will affect certain products and industries, saying "This revolution could spawn more new products than anything since the invention of the electric motor." 

Though published in 1973, three years before the 1976 Economist article, this article in the Los Angeles Times about an automated bowling score system proves the same point. Commercially available microprocessors revolutionized everything from calculators to bowling alleys. 

This document shares that the company I.B.M. which was creating many Personal Computers would start manufacturing some of Intel's microchips for their use. This then freed a lot of space for Intel to continue to make new and innovative projects which could have propelled them to become the company they are today.

This was the very first advertisement for the microprocessor, which was a two-page spread in electronic news in November of 1971.