Photos: How the microprocessor changed our lives for you
This little chip was created for a calculator, popularised by a video game, made smaller and its responsibilities have only got bigger and bigger. Here are some highlights from a 50-year journey.
Thank this team for making the world so comfortable with technology. The microprocessor, which powers every electronic device from washing machines to space satellites was created by Ted Hoff’s team at Intel in 1971, in the building in the background.(Intel)
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Work began in 1969 when the Japanese Nippon Calculating Machine Corporation hired Intel to design chips for a printing calculator.(Intel)
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Instead, Intel worked out the 4004 a general-purpose processor that could be used across many devices. They persuaded the Japanese company to allow them to sell it commercially.(Intel)
Intel was excited about the 4004. Customers would get the same computing power as a computer built in 1946, which used to fill an entire room. They released this ad in the November 15, 1971 issue of Electronic News. But even Intel didn’t anticipate the revolution to come.(Intel)
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Intel kept improving on the chip, coming out with smaller, more powerful versions. Manufacturing was simple. Semiconductors were placed in water and then a vacuum was drawn on them. A technician such as this one operated a Veeco Leak Detector. If a semiconductor had a leak, the water would destroy the integrated circuit.(Intel)
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Modus Vivendi (1000 people – 1000 Homes), 2000: In this self-portrait, a work of mixed media on canvas, Kallat appears as a swaggering, bespectacled juggler of heart and brain. The painting is an exploration of selfhood in the city of Mumbai, where he grew up and lives. The individual, lost in the multitudes, wanders in a state of perpetual disorientation, as reflected in the work. The radiating streaks of red, orange and green, reminiscent of thermal imagery, were achieved by texturing the canvas with layers of paint or canvas and then peeling off some parts to attain the desired visual effect.
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Sheer delight: While out surveying the remote Phoenix Islands Archipelago, Schmidt Ocean Institute scientists captured rare footage of a “glass octopus”, named so because it is completely see-through. What one does see when one shines a light on it is its optic nerve, eyeballs, and digestive tract. Even though this species has been known to science since 1918, scientists were forced to study about this animal through specimens found in the guts of predators, before this sighting.
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Herald / Harbinger is a permanent public art installation by Ben Rubin and Jer Thorp. It broadcasts the sounds of the Bow Glacier cracking and breaking 200 km away, to the centre of Calgary, one of Canada’s largest cities, almost in real time. The sounds and imagery shaped by data from a glacial observatory are broadcast through 16 speakers and seven LED arrays.
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Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022): The movie explores the many dimensions of parenthood and love through the story of a Chinese-American immigrant named Evelyn Wang (played by Michelle Yeoh) who, while struggling to run a failing laundromat business, uses her newfound powers to travel across multiple realities to save the world and work on her strained relationships with her loved ones. It’s a family drama that’s fast-paced, funny and, above all, tackles earnestly the idea of healing from intergenerational trauma.
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At first sight: For centuries, sunspots were thought to be Mercury passing across the Sun. By the early 17th century, with the invention of the telescope, astronomers could get a clearer look. In 1610, Galileo Galilei (who first used the telescope to observe space) in Italy and his British contemporary Thomas Harriot identified these as spots on the Sun. Seen here are 35 drawings of sunspots created by Galileo between June 2 and July 8, 1612.