Short answers, pulled from the story.
Leo Fender, Bill Carson, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares designed the Fender Stratocaster, which arrived in 1954 as a radical departure from flat guitars. The first model offered for sale was the 1954 Fender Stratocaster featuring a solid ash body and a 21-fret one-piece maple neck.
The 1954 Fender Stratocaster featured a solid ash body and a 21-fret one-piece maple neck with black dot inlays. In 1956, Fender began using alder for sunburst and custom-color bodies, and in 1959, they introduced a thick Brazilian rosewood fretboard known as a slab-board.
After Leo Fender sold the company to CBS Instruments in 1965, sales of the Fender Stratocaster dropped as the Jazzmaster was promoted as the flagship guitar. The CBS era from 1968 to 1982 saw a black CBS logo with a larger printed STRATOCASTER on the headstock and a perceived drop in instrument quality.
Fender resumed its former high quality manufacturing in 1985 when a group of investors and employees headed by Bill Schultz bought the company from CBS Instruments. Production moved to a new factory in Corona, California, about 100 miles away from the Fullerton plant which closed in late 1984.
The most expensive Stratocaster ever sold was David Gilmour's Black Strat, which sold for US$3.975 million in 2019 to guitar collector and Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay. This sale marked the most expensive guitar ever sold at the time of the transaction.