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Intel 4004 is Invented
Designed by Marcian Hoff in 1969, and finally constructed by Federico Faggin and a team of scientists in 1971, the Intel 4004 is the first commercially-produced processor. It clocked in at a max speed of 740 kHz, paling in comparison to today's CPUs that clock in at upwards of 3+ GHz (Hertz, Kilohertz, Megahertz, Gigahertz, for reference). Released on November 15th, 1971 to the general public, it became the first in an extremely long line of Intel CPUs. -
The C Programming Language is Invented
Developed by Dennis Ritchie and released in 1972, with a manual about the language itself being released in 1978, the C programming language is a staple in some compilers and application development nearly 50 years later. It's seen at least a dozen and a half revisions in the half-century that it's been alive and well, but it still works, and is still vital to development to this day. -
Cray-1 Supercomputer is Released
Revealed in 1975, the Cray-1 Supercomputer was designed by Seymour Cray, and manufactured by Cray Research. It sold for approximately $8 million dollars ($33 million in 2019), and over 100 were sold, netting the company almost a billion dollars. It was able to process large quantities of data extremely quickly compared to other supercomputers of the time, and addressed problems with those supercomputers in its design features. It could process over 240 million operations every second. -
The Apple II Personal Computer is Released
The Apple II, marketed as apple ][, was Apple's second entry into the personal computer market. Dominating the field with its at-the-time spectacular color graphics (other computers were only monochrome), as well as up to 48KB of RAM, the magazine Byte referred to it and two other personal computers of the time as the "1977 Trinity". Apple pushed for its use through large discounts for professional and educational environments, making it one of the most recognizable PCs of all time. -
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600, the definitive first video game console, released in 1977, pioneered how we interpret consoles and games. It focused its chassis around hardware and offloaded the storage of actual game files and data to an offboard ROM cartridge, first started by a different console a year prior. This popularized the format of having games be stored on a cartridge for future consoles like the SNES, the Sega Genesis, and more.
