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The Tech Age Is Born

Fifty years ago, the microprocessor changed the world.

By TCU Magazine

November 15^th, 2021

by Lisa Martin

If the modern world hinged on a before-and-after moment, the introduction of the world’s first commercial microprocessor in November 1971 would vie for the distinction. Without the Intel 4004 chip there would be no ATMs, no iPhones and no Zoom meetings.

A quarter-century ago, Byte magazine proclaimed the microprocessor “the life-support system of the modern world.” Subsequent historians, writers and social scientists have compared the microprocessor to the invention of the wheel and the written word.

Everything from tools to toys, appliances to automobiles incorporate microprocessors to speed up or otherwise improve function. These digital integrated circuits, which are about the size of a little fingernail, take in data, process that data according to the instructions programmed into their memories and provide output.

For a Cabbage Patch Kid doll in 1987, output consisted of a 400-word vocabulary, much to the delight of children who could make their baby girl or boy string together a sentence like “I love you” or “Milk, please.”

For home chefs, output meant restaurant-quality meals courtesy of a newfangled gadget called a food processor.

For physicians, dentists and other health care workers, output translated into everything from accessing a patient chart on a laptop to dashing off a digital prescription to a pharmacy.

Fifty years ago, few likely anticipated the outsized impact of this tiny piece of tech.

Making History

At the dawn of the 1970s, John Roach ’61 (MBA ’65) did, in fact, have more than an inkling of the microprocessor’s potential impact. The tech visionary helped revolutionize personal computing, one of the earliest and most enduring beneficiaries of this technology.

“Back when the microprocessor was first invented, they were not well understood or well designed,” said Roach, who in 1981 became CEO of Tandy Corp., parent company of RadioShack. Founded in Fort Worth in 1919 as a leather goods company, Tandy acquired the Boston-based chain named Radio Shack in 1963 and rebranded as RadioShack Corp. in 2000.

Early on, RadioShack carried handheld calculators powered by microprocessors. At over $100, the calculators boasted far less computational power than something that would sell for under $10 today. Early models possessed mechanical buttons rather than anything approximating a touchscreen.

In 1975, the company dipped a toe into personal computing after Roach saw potential in the market and envisioned a time when people would use the devices at home. But early consumer interest lagged behind his expectations.

Undaunted, Roach put together a small engineering group within RadioShack’s manufacturing unit and charged it with discovering if it could build a commercially viable personal microcomputer.

John Roach was CEO of the Fort Worth-based Tandy Corp., parent company of RadioShack. He envisioned widespread use of home computers, and in the late ’70s, Tandy was the leading seller of microcomputers. Photo by Rodger Mallison

During the research and development process, he and his team visited a microcomputer store in the heart of Silicon Valley.

“You’ve got to imagine what a microcomputer store was,” Roach said. “There were no computers there, just keyboards and other components you could use to build a microcomputer.”

RadioShack purchased black-and-white TVs with a gray cabinet from RCA and manufactured a coordinating gray plastic keyboard case. That initial computer, microprocessor included, was all in the keyboard.

CEO Charles Tandy ’40 (LLD ’71) told Roach in January 1977 that if the computers didn’t sell, the company could use them in stores.

The first RadioShack microcomputer debuted in New York City on Aug. 3, 1977. The most popular version of the $600 TRS-80 included a monitor and a cassette player used for loading and saving data. The company was overwhelmed with orders.

The TRS-80, RadioShack’s microcomputer with a monitor and a cassette player used for loading and saving data, cost $600. RadioShack sold more than 100,000 microcomputers in 1978. courtesy of National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

RadioShack sold more than 100,000 microcomputers in 1978.

“It doesn’t seem like a huge number when you talk about the millions of computers sold today,” Roach said. “But it was by far the largest quantity sold that year in the industry.”

Innovation Unleashed

RadioShack soon became the largest customer of an up-and-coming company that had relocated from New Mexico to Seattle and rebranded itself as Microsoft. Roach said the young Bill Gates was “a sharp businessman. He didn’t sell anything but instead sold a license for you to use the thing.”

In 1983, in conjunction with Microsoft, RadioShack launched one of the first commercial laptops. The machine had a built-in keyboard and a small eight-line display, all in one plane. At an inch-and-a-half thick, the device was truly portable, and, Roach said, “every journalist had to have one.”

Around the early ’90s, RadioShack exited the category of personal computing because the company could no longer compete profitably. IBM, Apple and independent manufacturers that ran Windows were thriving.

By that point, the microprocessor was ubiquitous.

“It changed the world in so many ways,” Roach said. “I haven’t looked up anything in a dictionary or encyclopedia for years.”

Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg, TCU’s provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, likewise appreciated the potential of these powerful chips.

After graduating with a degree in electrical engineering in 1984, she took a job at IBM as a product developer, programming microprocessors to replace analog functions with digital logic in the areas of communications and image processing.

“A microprocessor can act as a controller, orchestrating functional steps like a symphony conductor. It can also act as a processor, completing millions of repetitive tasks or complex algorithms quickly,” Dahlberg said. Analog equivalents simply didn’t have the complex functional power found in a tiny chip.

The first calculators powered by microprocessors were introduced in 1970 with a price tag north of $100. Courtesy of National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, americanhistory.si.edu

These experiences with microprocessors, she said, motivated her to pursue a master’s degree and PhD in computer engineering. She became a professor and researcher in digital communication.

She said digital communications and image analysis, powered by the microprocessor, have enabled the internet to permeate every aspect of daily life in the 21st century. Smartphones, laptops and a host of smart devices have revolutionized how people work, socialize, learn, shop, entertain themselves, access information … and also how they steal things.

“The humble microprocessor has brought innovations that demand increased interdisciplinary education in academia,” Dahlberg said. “Advances in analytics, security and privacy, and social media technologies elicit new questions of ethics, equity and policy.”

Gaming Gets Good

Gaming is among the many categories revolutionized by the microprocessor. Prior to it, arcade games mostly were of the pinball variety. In 1972, Magnavox released the Odyssey, a home device that hooked up to a TV and featured a game of pingpong with a ball that traveled back and forth across the screen. Revolutionary, yes, but without a microprocessor, play became pretty repetitive.

The units came with clear plastic sheets to tape to the TV screen to convert pingpong to other games such as hockey, said Wendi Sierra, assistant professor of game studies in the John V. Roach Honors College. Plus, players had to keep track of their own scores.

Four years later, the Fairchild Channel F debuted. Thanks to a microprocessor, the device was the first video game console to use exchangeable ROM cartridges rather than relying only on built-in games. A maker of arcade games called Atari rolled out its own version of a home gaming system in 1977.

Video game systems like the Magnavox Odyssey, which hit the market in 1972, came with a fixed number of built-in games. Within four years, as microprocessor prices slid, consumers were buying home consoles that used cartridges. Boffy b (Wikimedia Commons)

“Coming out just one year later, Atari was able to have 128 colors rather than the Fairchild’s eight,” said Sierra, who noted that the Atari unit had far more memory as well.

“Microprocessors allowed games to switch from being hardware-based — like the Magnavox Odyssey with all games precoded into the system — to software-based, where developers could write new games that would tell the microprocessor inside what to do,” she said.

William Gibbons, an associate professor of musicology at TCU, studies video game music and music technology. He recalled an early iteration of the game Space Invaders with music in a repetitive, four-note march pattern.

The game sped up as players killed more aliens; so did the music.

“Those early processors were not capable of coping with that much data at once,” Gibbons said. So the more aliens that players eliminated, the faster the processor worked. Progression not only increased the pace of play but also hastened the background beat.

Microprocessors likewise transformed music. MP3 technology took off in the early 2000s and offered a whole new way to deliver music to consumers. Today streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music afford listeners access to 75 million songs, a number that grows by the day.

Evolving technology is changing the way people like Gibbons think about music.

“In the game-audio field, there are leading artists who don’t necessarily play a non-computer-based instrument,” he said. “All of our standards [in the classroom] are based on people playing the violin or piano, not based on someone who plays a laptop.”

Mikio Akagi, an assistant professor of the history and philosophy of science in the John V. Roach Honors College, grapples with big questions including the impact of the microprocessor on the enduring mind-body enigma.

Generations of philosophers have pondered whether the mind and the brain are separate and distinct entities.

“Computers give us a metaphor for understanding our minds,” Akagi said. A computer, like a brain, is “a natural object in the world … that can do the things that minds can do without any supernatural properties.”

Akagi wonders about technology and its impact on society and humanity, including the influence of social media on mental health.

"There’s hardly anything you can name that isn’t going to be impacted even more in the future by the microprocessor," says John Roach. Photo by Rodger Mallison

While scholars debate circumstances and challenges made possible by a 50-year-old invention, industry marches onward.

“Millions of engineers are working every day to enhance, invent and improve our lives with technology,” Roach said. “There’s hardly anything you can name that isn’t going to be impacted even more in the future by the microprocessor.”

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