The first working integrated circuit on germanium was demonstrated by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments in 1958.
Jean Hoerni, a cofounder of Fairchild Semiconductor, invented the first planar, or flat, transistor in 1959.
who later cofounded Intel
Announced in 1961, this resistor-transistor logic chip was one of the first commercial integrated circuits.
In 1974, Intel introduced the 8080. With roughly 5,000 transistors, it was the heart of the Altair personal computer.
Four years later, Intel’s 8086 chip, containing 29,000 transistors,
Intel’s 386, released in 1985, had 275,000 transistors
In 1991, AMD released its own 386 microprocessor, with approximately 200,000 transistors, helping bring competition to the industry.
Motorola’s 68000 microprocessor, introduced in 1979, had 68,000 transistors
The Pentium processor debuted in 1993 and had 3.1 million transistors.
In 2000, Intel unveiled the Pentium 4 chip,
it had 42 million transistors.
clipped from: www.technologyreview.com 
