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. People like Noyce and Moore were nicknamed the “Fairchildren“.
Robert Noyce typed himself a one page idea of what he wanted to do with his new company, and that was enough to convince San Francisco venture capitalist Art Rock to back Noyce’s and Moore’s new venture.
Rock raised $2.5 million dollars in less than 2 days by selling convertible debentures. Art Rock became the first chairmen of Intel.
Intel Trademark
The name “Moore Noyce” was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so the two founders decided upon the name “Intel” for their new company, a shortened version of “Integrated Electronics“. However, the rights to the name had to bought from a company called Intelco first.
Intel Products
In 1969, Intel released the world’s first metal oxide semi-conductor (MOS) static ram, the 1101. Also in 1969, Intel’s first money making product was the 3101 Schottky bipolar 64-bit static random access memory (SRAM) chip. A year later in 1970, Intel introduced the 1103, DRAM memory chip.
In 1971, Intel introduced the now-famous world’s first single chip microprocessor (computer on a chip), the Intel 4004, invented by Intel engineers Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, and Stanley Mazor.
In 1972, Intel introduced the first 8-bit microprocessor the 8008. In 1974, the Intel 8080 microprocessor was introduced with ten times the power of the 8008.
In 1975, the 8080 microprocessor was used in one of the first consumer home computer – the Altair 8800 that was sold in kit form.
In 1976, Intel introduced the first micro-controllers, the 8748 and 8048, a computer-on-a-chip optimized to control electronic devices.
Though produced by theUSA’s Intel Corporation, the 1993 Pentium was basically the outcome of a research conducted by an Indian engineer. Popularly known as the Father of the Pentium chip, the inventor of the computer chip is Vinod Dham.