Old Bob was sounding off on Fox New's "Five" last night, displaying his deep ignorance. Bob was defending Obama's claim that government support was behind every successful enterpreneur. So he says "Bill Gates claimed the space program made the first micro computer possible."
Not true Bob. What made the microcomputer, the Altairs, the Ithaca Intersysterms, the Cromemcos, the Commodore PETs, the Apple IIs and the Radio Shack TRS-80s possible was the microprocessor, a single 40 pin dual inline package that does the thinking that makes a computer compute.
The first micro processor was designed by Intel, for a Japanese customer making desktop calculating machines. The Japanese company, BubCom, wanted to make an exceptionally powerful product that could do square roots. The Intel designers were inspired by the PDP-8, the first minicomputer, which had an elegantly simple design and astonishing power. Intel designed a CPU chip for BubCom which became the Intel 4004. To make the CPU become a desktop calculator Intel wrote a program, stored in a ROM chip to make the CPU recognize the keys in the keyboard, do the arithmetic and drive the display. The 4004 was nearly as powerful as the much bigger contemporary PDP-8 minicomputer.
The PDP-8 motherboard, designed before microprocessors existed, used ordinary TTL logic gates to do it's thinking. That mother board was some 17 inches square, contained some 200 odd chips. The entire PDP-8 machine cost $7000 in 1969, weighed 50 pounds, and mounted in a 19 inch relay rack. Took up a foot of rack space. The Intel 4004 chip was nearly as powerful, cost $20 (then) and didn't weigh an ounce. This microprocessor chip made the microcomputers possible.
No government funds, projects, spinoffs, regulators, tax men involved. It was a straight commercial deal brought to us by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, no government involvement what so ever.
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