From mechanism to monolith

The stressful nine-month gestation had passed both too quickly and too slowly. Now the wait was finally over and Federico Faggin, father, mother, and midwife, expectantly approached his newborn. Hope tempered with trepidation quickly bubbled over into elation as waveform after waveform happily revealed the lusty cries of a healthy infant: the 4004 was alive and well! It was certainly a promising start for the microprocessor, but not even the other parents of the 4004 - Stan Mazor, Ted Hoff, and Masatoshi Shima - could imagine just how promising. With astonishing speed, its descendants would completely transform human existence.