Hewlett-Packard
More info
- Creator
- Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard
- Released
- 1939
- Successor
- HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (2015)
The Palo Alto garage company often called Silicon Valley's starting point, which ended up as two separate businesses.
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started out in 1939 in a garage on Addison Avenue in Palo Alto, and settled the order of their names with a coin toss. Their first product was the HP 200A audio oscillator, and Disney bought eight of them while making Fantasia. For decades HP was mainly a test-and-measurement company, known for an engineering culture it called "the HP Way".
Computing came later. The HP-35 (1972) was the first handheld scientific calculator, and the LaserJet (1984) made laser printers ordinary office equipment. In 2002 HP bought Compaq after a bruising proxy fight. In 2015 it split into HP Inc. (PCs and printers) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (servers and services). The instruments business had already been spun off as Agilent in 1999.