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A corporation is a business that, although owned by one or more investors,
legally has the rights and duties of an individual. Corporations have the right
to buy, sell, and own property. Corporations may make legal contracts, hire and
fire workers, set prices, and be sued, fined, and taxed. A business must obtain
a charter of incorporation from a state legislature or Congress to be legally
recognized as a corporation.(Watson, p211) While corporations didn't exist until
the mid to late 1800s, the idea of the corporation had existed since the early
1600s. It all started with English merchants who started trading companies to
help fund the early colonies. If the colonies thrived, the stockholders reaped
in the profit. (Watson, p211) A corporation is started when a sole
proprietorship, a one-owner business, that is the most common form of business
institution in the US, or a partnership, an association of two or more people in
order to run a business, decides that they don't want to be personally
responsible for any loss the company might have. (Watson, p211) Or they might
decide that they want the company to live on after they die, that is for the
business to have unlimited life. Since neither of these goals can be reached
with a sole proprietorship, or a partnership, the owner (or owners, as the case
may be) decide that he (they) want to convert their business to a corporation.
The owner(s) file a charter of incorporation from the government to be legally
recognized as a corporation.
(Boyd, March, 99) The owner(s) then sell shares of
stock, documents representing ownership in the corporation, to investors. These
investors buy and sell the stock to small investors, or stockholders. Since
there is no limit to the number of shareholders to a company, the investors vote
(for every share you own you get one vote) on a board of directors. The board of
directors are in charge of hiring the people responsible for the every-day
running of the corporation. These positions include, but are not limited to: the
president, vice president, and other chief administrators. (Watson, p211-212) If
a corporation reaps a profit, investors may receive a dividend, or a share of
the monetary gain made by the company. The elected board of directors choose
whether the money will go towards profit, expansion of the company,
modernization of the company, or research and development. (Watson, p212) With
about 85% of the microprocessor market, Intel is definitely inside. Its
microprocessors -- including the Pentium -- have been providing brains for
IBM-compatible PCs 1981.(http://thestandard.net….)
Intel started on July 16,
1968 when magnetic core memory was the leading technology at the time. They were
trying to make semi-conductor memory practical with silicon memory.
Unfortunately for Intel semi-conductor memory cost 100 times more than magnetic
core memory, but the silicon had many advantages - smaller size, greater
performance, and reduced energy consumption. Then, in late 1968,the Japanese
company Busicom asked Intel to produce a series of chips (twelve chips for every
unit) for a group of programmable calculators that they were producing.
Normally, chips were made specifically for each product. Well, the designers at
Intel decided that they would make a general purpose logical chip to replace all
of the many different varieties of chips that would go into the different
electronics. The logical chip was a major success; the only problem was that
Busicom had the rights to the chip.
Realizing that this chip could have a major
impact on society, the founders Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore praised the new chip,
while people in the corporation still wanted to stick with producing memory.
Intel bought the rights to the chip from the struggling Japanese company for
$60,000, and this paved the way for Intel's developing vision of ubiquitous
(universal) microprocessor-based computing.(…/cn71898a.htm). The 4004
microprocessor set was introduced near the end of 1971. Smaller than a thumbnail
and packing 2300 transistors, the $200 chip delivered as much computing power as
the first electronic computer, ENIAC. By comparison, ENIAC relied on 18,000
vacuum tubes packed into 3,000 cubic feet when it was built in 1946. The 4004
executed 60,000 operations in one second, primitive by today's standards, but a
major breakthrough at the time..(…/cn71898a.htm). Directly after the 4004, Intel
introduced the 8008 microprocessor, which processed eight bits of information at
a time, twice as much as the original chip. This technological break-through put
microprocessors everywhere, from fast food restaurants to airport control
towers. Yet no one had thought of the personal computer, until; Intel Chairman
Emeritus Moore remembers, In the mid-1970s, someone came to me with an idea for
what was basically the PC.
The idea was that we could outfit an 8080 processor
with a keyboard and a monitor and sell it in the home market. I asked, 'What's
it good for?' And the only answer was that a housewife could keep her recipes on
it. I personally didn't see anything useful in it, so we never gave it another
thought. Intel decided that they would try to become the processor-manufacture
for IBM. They received some static at first, but eventually; Intel's long-term
commitment to the microprocessor product line and ability to produce in large
masses convinced IBM to choose the 8088 chip processor for the first personal
computer. Intel was thrilled at the thought, but had no idea the PC would become
so popular.
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