What they say now is irrelevant, because it is retconned with the purpose of increasing the apparent importance of what they have done in 1971 vs. what they hav

What they say now is irrelevant, because it is retconned with the purpose of increasing the apparent importance of what they have done in 1971 vs. what they have done in 1972. Moreover, you can be pretty certain that whoever has written that text has never read the datasheets of Intel 4004, to be able to evaluate whether it was "general purpose" or not. Even at its launch in 1971, when Intel has begun to offer for sale the 4004 because Busicom was unable to pay the price desired by Intel for 4004, the Intel marketing has attempted to present the 4004 as much more general purpose than it really was, in order to find customers for it, in order to ensure the profitability that could not be provided by Busicom. During its design, 4004 has never been intended to be general-purpose, because the plan was to sell it to a single customer. Only after the delivery to the intended customer the Intel marketing has made great efforts to find other possible applications for it.