The Central Processing Unit is an embeded chip that acts as the 'brains' of a computer. What Intel chip was used in the Altair (the first real personal computer)?
The Intel 8080 was a jazzed-up calculator chip. It was included in microcomputer kits which were little more than demonstration tools and did little except blink lights. Besides the 8080 chip, the Altair included a power supply, a front panel with a large number of lights and 256 bytes (not kilobytes) of memory. The kit sold for {$395} and had to be assembled.
As surprising as its age is, the Internet was born from the U.S. military's need to construct a decentralized computer network that could withstand a nuclear war. The network was used and refined by universities throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but it wasn't until 1992 that the Internet was made available to the general public.
