Motherboard of the desktop computer 141-PF

The motherboard of the desktop calculator 141-PF of the japanese company Busicom (Business Computer Corporation) has plenty of punch. The first commercially available microprocessor (Intel 4004, the white chip) was developed for this machine by Intel, a then young, small company. The function of a calculator was no longer realized by fixed wired components but by making a computer that was programmed to act like a calculator. The input was realized by key block; the output via printer. The 4-bit microprocessor is composed of 2300 p-MOS transistors in 10µm structure width with the then state of the art silicon gate technology. It can handle about 60,000 instructions per second. In 1969 Busicom approached Intel to develop a set of more than 12 chips for an electronic desk calculator. Intel could not provide so much capacity, as design, layouts and production of a chip could take up to one year. So Marcian (Ted) Hoff suggested less complex design with just four chips (4001, read only memory; 4002, Random Access Memory, 4003, shift register and 4004, processor). After the two companies had agreed on Hoffs four-chip design, Masatoshi Shima (Busicom) and Stanley Mazor (Intel) set out to accomplish it, which eventually succeeded 1970-71 under the direction of Federico Faggin.
At the start of production in 1971, Intel produced the chipset exclusively for Busicom. The harsh competition in the calculator market however led to Busicom renegotiating the contract already at the beginning of 1971. In the course of these negotiations Intel gained universal rights to sell the chip set.
On November 15th, 1971 the first microprocessor available on the market was advertised in Electronic News with "Announcing a new era of integrated electronics." By the end of the 1970s, the microprocessor had become established on the market and helped Intel to success.