NPR turned 50 this year. And to celebrate, we're marking some of the big events of 1971. If you're listening to this on a smartphone or on the internet or in a car full of computer chips, that is only ...

Thirty years ago, on June 8, 1978, Intel Corp. introduced its first 16-bit microprocessor, the 8086, with a splashy ad heralding “the dawn of a new era.” Overblown? Sure, but also prophetic. While the ...

These days we are blessed with multicore 64-bit monster CPUs that can calculate an entire moon mission’s worth of instructions in the blink of an eye. Once upon a time, though, the state of the art ...

In 1958 the integrated circuit was developed by a young engineer at Texas Instruments named Jack St. Clair Kilby. He put together a few transistors and capacitors, linking them with a thin layer of ...

As NPR marks its 50th anniversary, we look back at an innovation that also changed the world in 1971: the unveiling of the first commercially produced microprocessor. NPR turned 50 this year. And to ...

The MP944 was a microprocessor for the Central Airborne Data Computer (CADC) installed on the US Navy's F-14 Tomcat fighter jets, and was developed between 1968 and 1970 by a team led by Steve Geller ...