The Intel Corporation of Santa Clara, California, was founded in 1968 by Robert Noyce (1927–1990), co-inventor of the integrated circuit, and his colleague Gordon Moore (1929–), the originator of "Moore's law." The name Intel was a shortened form of Integrated Electronics. Noyce and Moore were joined by Andy Grove and the three, all formerly from Fairchild Semiconductor, led the firm on its initial mission to produce the world's first semiconductor-based memory chips. The company went on to commercialize the microprocessor, the product that Intel is best known for today.

In 1969 a Japanese manufacturer, Busicom, commissioned Intel engineers to design a set of a dozen custom chips for its new family of scientific calculators. At the time, all logic chips were custom-designed for each customer's product. Logic chips perform calculations and execute programs, unlike memory chips, which store instructions and data.

Intel engineer Marcian "Ted" Hoff improved on...