Federico Faggin dips a chip The man who developed the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004. Credit: Intel Free Press / Wikimedia Commons Early 50th birthday greetings to car maker and would-be space traveller Elon Musk, born on 28 June 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, and to information technology specialist Julian Assange, born on 3 July 1971 in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. Also wishing a belated happy 50th to the Intel 4004, which IEEE Spectrum magazine calls “the world’s first microprocessor – a complete general-purpose CPU on a single chip”. The 4004 became available for commercial sale in March 1971. IEEE Spectrum, published by the New York-based Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, says its release “marked the beginning of Intel’s rise to global dominance in the processor industry”.