The Microprocessor

Intel put an entire computer processor on a single sliver of silicon and sold it as a product — the 4004, built for a Japanese calculator company, containing 2,300 transistors. Computing had been a room-sized activity owned by governments and corporations; now it could be embedded in anything and bought by anyone. The industry then discovered a peculiar regularity: the number of transistors on a chip kept roughly doubling every two years, a pattern named Moore's Law that held for half a century. No other technology has compounded at that rate for that long — which is why the phone in your pocket outclasses everything that flew to the Moon.