Ken has written an article on reverse engineering the first FPGA chip, the XC2064:

The FPGA was invented by Ross Freeman1 who co-founded Xilinx2 in 1984 and introduced the first FPGA, the XC2064. 3 This FPGA is much simpler than modern FPGAs—it contains just 64 logic blocks, compared to thousands or millions in modern FPGAs—but it led to the current multi-billion-dollar FPGA industry. Because of its importance, the XC2064 is in the Chip Hall of Fame. I reverse-engineered Xilinx’s XC2064, and in this blog post I explain its internal circuitry (above) and how a “bitstream” programs it.

See the full post on Ken Shirriff’s blog.