HP Historical Highlights

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• The 1930s
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Following graduation as electrical engineers from Stanford University in 1934, Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett went on a two-week camping and fishing trip in the Colorado mountains. They discovered strong similarities in their attitudes toward most things and became close friends. Bill continued graduate studies at Stanford and MIT while Dave took a job with General Electric. With the encouragement of Stanford professor and mentor Fred Terman, the two decided to start a business "and make a run for it ourselves."

• Dave and Lucile Packard move into house at 367 Addision Avenue, Palo Alto, California. Bill Hewlett rents cottage behind the house and Bill and Dave begin part time work in the garage with $538 in working capital.
• Bill Hewlett's study of negative feedback results in HP's first product ... the resistance-capacity audio oscillator (HP200A), an electronic instrument used to test sound equipment. The oscillator used an incandescent bulb as part of its wiring scheme to provide variable resistance, a breakthrough in oscillator design. The principle of feedback provides the foundation for other early HP products such as a harmonic wave analyzer and several distortion analyzers.
• Walt Disney orders eight oscillators (HP 200B) for the production of the movie Fantasia.

• Partnership formed January 1, 1939; coin toss decides company name.

Products from the fledgling partnership won excellent acceptance among engineers and scientists. Bill and Dave signed with sales rep firms to market their increasingly popular products across the U.S. The start of World War II turned a trickle of U.S. government orders for electronic instruments into a stream and then a flood. New products were added and HP built the first of its own buildings.

• Moves from garage to rented building at Page Mill Road and El Camino Real in Palo Alto.
• Company pays its first bonus to employees, a $5 Christmas bonus. This later becomes a production bonus and later becomes the companywide profit-sharing plan.
• Net Revenue: $34,000; Employees: 3; Products: 8.

• Constructs first HP-owned building: a 10,000-square foot office/laboratory/factory at 395 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto (Redwood Builidng). Bill and Dave built it so it could be converted into a grocery store if the electronics business should fail.

• HP first enters the microwave field with signal generators developed for the Naval Research Laboratory and a radar-jamming device. A complete line of microwave test products follows World War II and HP becomes the acknowledged leader in signal generators.

• Incorporated August 18, 1947.

Hewlett-Packard went through a growing and maturing process in the '50s, learning much about the "new" technology of electronics and about the internal effects of growth. "How" the company grew was as hotly debated as "how much" the company should grow. This was the time when HP hammered out its corporate objectives -- the basis of its special management philosophy - and embarked upon a path toward globalization.

• HP invents the high-speed frequency counter (HP 524A) and greatly reduces the time required (from about 10 minutes to one or two seconds) to measure high frequencies. One application: radio stations use the HP 524A to accurately set frequencies (e.g. 104.7 FM) to comply with FCC regulations for frequency stability.
• Net Revenue: $5.5 million; Employees: 215.

• First public stock offering: November 6, 1957.
• HP corporate objectives written. Serve as basis for HP's management style which comes to be known as the HP way.
• HP begins manufacturing in its first building in Stanford Research Park, Palo Alto.

• HP's first acquisition: F.L. Moseley Company of Pasadena, California, producer of high-quality graphic recorders. This marks HP's entry into the business of plotters.
• Net Revenue: $30 million; Employees: 1,778; Products: 373.

• Establishes presence outside of California with European marketing organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and first manufacturing plant outside of Palo Alto in Boeblingen, West Germany.

HP continues its steady growth in the test-and-measurement marketplace, and branches out into related fields like medical electronics and analytical instrumentation. The company begins to be noticed as a progressive, well-managed company ... and a great place to work.

• Establishes first U.S. manufacturing plant outside of Palo Alto in Loveland, Colorado.

• Enters medical field with purchase of Sanborn Company, Waltham, Massachusetts.
• Lists on New York and Pacific stock exchanges as HWP.

• First HP listing on Fortune magazine's list of the top 500 U.S. companies: No. 460. HP continues to climb in the annual Fortune ranking.

• First joint venture formed (with Yokogawa Electric Works): Yokogawa Hewlett-Packard in Tokyo, Japan.

• Company celebrates 25th anniversary.
• Dave Packard elected chairman, Bill Hewlett elected president.
• The HP 5060A, a cesium-beam standard instrument, gains worldwide recognition as the "flying clock." International standards for time set by flying the HP 5060A around the world.

• HP enters the analytical instrumentation field with the acquisition of F&M Scientific Corporation, Avondale, Pennsylvania.
• Net Revenue: $165 million; Employees: 9,000.

• HP Laboratories forms. The company's central research facility, it is one of the world's leading electronic research centers.
• HP's first computer (the HP 2116A) is designed as a controller for some of the company's test and measurement instruments. Today, HP offers a full range of computing products.

• HP's operation in Boeblingen, Germany, introduces a non-invasive fetal heart monitor that helps babies by detecting fetal distress during labor. The plant also pioneers the concept of flexible working hours, an idea adopted at HP manufacturing facilities around the world.

• World's first desktop scientific calculator: HP 9100A. This is the forerunner of HP's current line of high-performance workstations.

• Dave Packard appointed U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense (serves from 1969-71).
• HP markets its first time-shared operating system on a minicomputer supporting up to 16 users.

HP continued its tradition of innovation with the introduction of the first scientific hand-held calculator. And toward the end of the decade marked by significant growth in earnings and employment, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard delegated day-to-day operating management of the company to John Young.

• Net Revenue: $365 million; Employees: 16,000.

• Work with lasers produces a laser interferometer capable of measuring to millionths of an inch. The HP laser interferometer is still the tool of choice in microchip manufacturing.

• HP pioneers the era of personal computing with the first scientific hand-held calculator, the HP-35, which makes the engineer's slide rule obsolete.
• Branches into business computing with the HP 3000 minicomputer.

• HP's small general purpose computer system is the industry's first commerical distributed data processing system.

• First minicomputer to be based on 4K dynamic random access semiconductors (DRAMs) instead of magnetic cores.

• HP simplifies instrument systems by creating a standard interface. The electronics industry adopts the HP-IB (interface bus) as an international standard to allow one or more instruments to connect easily to a computer.

• John Young named HP president (appointed CEO in 1978).

HP became a major player in the computer industry in the '80s with the a full range of computers from desktop machines to powerful minicomputers. And the decade marked the start of HP's successful march into the printer market with the launch of inkjet and laser printers that attach to personal computers.

• HP introduces its first personal computer, the HP-85.
• Net Revenue: $3 billion; Employees: 57,000.

• Electronic mail system developed by HP Limited in the U.K. is the first major wide-area commercial network of its kind based on minicomputers.
• Introduces HP 9000 technical computer with 32-bit "superchip" technology -- the first "desktop mainframe" -- as powerful as room-sized computers of the 1960s.

• Pioneers inkjet printing technology with the introduction of the HP Thinkjet printer. Today's inkjet printers continue to provide technological break throughs at ever decreasing prices.
• Introduces HP LaserJet printer -- the company's most successful single product ever. Today's LaserJet printers, are considered the world standard for laser printing.

• Net revenue: $6.5 billion; Employees: 85,000.

• Introduces broad new family of computer systems based on innovative RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) architecture. The development effort, code-named "Spectrum," costs more than $250 million over five years -- HP's most expensive R&D effort ever.

• Bill Hewlett retires as vice chairman of the board of directors.
• Walter Hewlett (son of Bill) and David Woodley Packard (son of Dave) elected to the board of directors.

• HP moves into top 50 on Fortune 500 listing: No. 49

• HP celebrates 50th anniversary year.
• HP's new atomic emission detector is first analytical instrument capable of detecting all of the elements (except helium) in gas chromatography.
• Acquires Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, Massachusetts, workstation manufacturer.

While it's too early to close the book on the decade, HP will probably be remembered as one of the few companies in the world to successfully marry the technologies of measurement, computing and communication. HP's proven abilities to collect, analyze, store and display information will bring the much-heralded information superhighways a step closer to reality.

• Introduces HP LaserJet III laser printer. To see today's LaserJet printers, click here.
• HP Laboratories opens research facility in Tokyo.
• Net Revenue: $13.2 billion; Employees: 91,500.

• HP 95LX palmtop PC, weighing 11 ounces, combines Lotus 1-2-3 software with advanced calculation features and data-communication capabilities.
• HP SONOS 1500 echocardiograph system allows doctors to perform quantitative, non-invasive cardiac analysis in real time by processing ultrasound waves.
• The HP color scanner allows computers and read photographs and other visual images.

• Lew Platt named HP president and CEO.
• Introduces the Corporate Business Systems -- nine HP 3000 and HP 9000 computing systems with mainframe performance at up to 90 percent lower cost.

• Introduces three-pound HP OmniBook 300 "superportable" personal computer with enough battery power to last during a flight across the United States.
• Ships 10 millionth HP LaserJet printer; HP has now sold more than 20 million printers.
• Dave Packard retires as chairman of the board of directors. Lew Platt named chairman, president and chief executive officer.

• Revenues reach $25 billion.
• HP produces the world's brightest LED (light-emitting diode). Combining bright output, reliability and low power consumption, they replace incandescent lamps in many new applications.
• Introduces HP Color LaserJet printer.
• Introduces OfficeJet printer-fax machine-copier.
• Introduces HP 200LX palmtop PC with built-in Pocket Quicken.

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