Noyemi K

The Intel Corporation began as a sandwich shop in San Francisco, California in 1956. The name was a portmanteau of the founders’ last names—Michael Ingram and Matthew Telling.

They marketed their shop with flyers promoting their sandwiches, the most memorable being a poster of a large submarine sandwich saying “It’s not worth anything if it doesn’t have Intel inside!”. Later, they changed this slogan to “Intel Inside”.

Their most popular sandwich product, right up till the company shifted gears in 1968, was the “Penti-ham”, named for its five slices of ham and cheese and topping of five fried onions and mayo. They discontinued their sandwich business in 1968, when Ingram discovered semiconductor technology.

Matthew Telling left the company after Intel became a semiconductor manufacturer. He predicted that the computer fad would die off in months, as sandwiches would overtake them in terms of processing power in mere years with the application of multiple processing cores. He went off with Anthony “Tony” Smith to found AMD, which stood for “Anthony & Matthew’s Deli” in 1969.

In 1972, Intel launched the 4004, the first commercially available microprocessor. The name comes from the age of Ingram’s younger brother and young son with an extra zero to separate them and make it more marketable (in the 70s, 4 was a more marketable number than any other).

Sometime later, Ingram paid tribute to his sandwich days and named a new processor after his old popular product, the Penti-ham. He called it “Pentium”.