"Wim E. van Bemmel" <bemspan@XS4ALL.NL> wrote:

> When I finished my studies in 1973 at what is now Delft University of
> Technology the first microprocessors (Intel 4004) had just seen light..

The Intel 4004 and 8008 were both introduced commercially in 1972, although
the 4004 was produced for Busicom in 1971.  Intel introduced the 8048, the
world's first 8-bit single chip microcontroller in 1976.  I think the earliest
PIC processors were introduced by GI in 1977.

> Could have saved me a lot of work when I did some development with 8051's
> in mid-eighties!

You probably wouldn't have wanted to use the early PICs, since they were only
available in masked-ROM versions.  No EPROM or OTP versions, and don't even
think about EEPROM and Flash.  It wasn't until the introduction of the
16C54 that PICs became practical for low-volume applications.  And it wasn't
until Parallax introduced an inexpensive programmer that they became suitable
for hobbyists.  In the early days, Microchip jealously guarded the
programming specifications, so you couldn't even build your own programmer.

Cheers,
Eric