Intel A Corporation Essays - American Brands,

Intel A Corporation "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