Interestingly, the company has the most direct connection to the birth of Silicon Valley, with the garage where the company started more than 60 years ago now serving as an important historical witness to the history of computer development. In other words, if you look back at HP's path, you have to start with Silicon Valley and the "Silicon Valley Fathers.
"Father of Silicon Valley" is the United States Stanford University Fred Terman (F. Terman) Professor. In the early 30s of this century, far-sighted Terman as a professor of electrical engineering as vice president, he was determined to "railroad king" old Stanford gifted the school of the land set aside 579 acres in Santa Clara, near San Francisco, Palo Alto (Palo Alto) as the center of the creation of a high-tech "Stanford Research Area" - Stanford University as the center, research, development, production, sales in one of the industrial park, which is later known as "Silicon Valley".
In the traditional university "ivory tower" in the establishment of enterprises, the first "crab" is required to eat the courage of the people. Terman first thought of two of his students -- Bill Hewllet (B. Hewllet) and David Packard (D. Packard).
Born in Stanford Medical School, Hewllet and Packard, who grew up in a family of lawyers, were both graduate students of Prof. Terman. 1934, the two went on a two-week hiking and camping trip in the Colorado mountains together, and their *** comradeship and hobbies have made them inseparable and close friends, and they have maintained a friendship and partnership that has lasted for more than a half-century. With Terman's encouragement and support, they began to plan for the creation of a private company and held their first "official" meeting in August 1937, the topic of which was "Preliminary Organizational Planning and Outline of Work for the Entrepreneurial Plan. The following year, the married Packard's moved into 376 Anderson Street in Palo Alto, and Hewlett rented a cottage nearby. In a modest one-car garage behind Packard's house, the two took their first steps into business. They had only $538 in working capital, and all their "fixed assets" were: a workbench, a drill press, a screwdriver, a soldering iron, a hacksaw, and a few purchased electronic parts. on New Year's Day, 1939, the two men formally signed the partnership agreement, and flipped a coin to determine whose name would be placed in front of theirs. Needless to say, Hewlett won, and the partnership was registered as Hewlett-Packard, or HP for short, taking the first letter of Hewllet-Packard, which translates to Hewlett-Packard in China.
What next? Again, Trotman gave them a good idea. He suggested that Hewlett-Packard start by making a resistive audio oscillator, and arranged for another Stanford graduate, a vice president of International Telephone and Telegraph, to invest $500 in the venture. By Christmas of that year," recalls Packard, "we had an audio oscillator product. We put it on the mantelpiece, had it photographed, made up a two-page sales brochure, and sent it to about 25 potential customers according to a list provided by Trotman. ......" This was Hewlett-Packard's first product, called the HP200A, and it sold for a mere 54 dollars. Surprisingly, orders came in quickly, and some people even sent checks. It happened to meet Disneyland filming the movie "Fantasyland" urgently waiting for the use of this instrument, they sold 8 units at once, and it is said that there is still one is still in use in Hollywood. Thus, Hewlett-Packard's first year of business took hold, but with sales of only $5,369 and profits of a paltry $1,563.
In 1940, Hewlett-Packard gradually expanded its business to eight products and moved from a garage to a rented building at 395 Page Mill Street. The company gives its first Christmas bonus - $5 each - to just three employees. In 1941, the outbreak of Pearl Harbor, Hewlett-Packard has 17 employees, annual sales reached 100,000 U.S. dollars; 1943, Hewlett-Packard for the Naval Research Laboratory to develop signal generators and radar jammers and other products, the first to enter the field of microwave equipment manufacturing; 1945, when the draft Hewlett demobilized and returned to Palo Alto, he found himself already a large company with millions of assets Vice President. At the time, Hewlett-Packard had constructed its own Redwood building, which Packard told him could be converted into a grocery store if the electronics industry faltered in the future. However, the crisis of converting into a grocery store did not come to pass; instead, Hewlett-Packard had a smooth ride and grew at a high rate, and on August 18, 1947, it was converted into a stock corporation. Prof. Terman seemed happier than Hewlett and Packard. He told everyone the "myth" of Hewlett-Packard's rise to prominence, touting to would-be investors the advantages of running a business close to a university. "Talk to Hewlett or Pacat. With HP in front of you," Terman said heartily, "you'll be the second or third HP in no time."
The seeds that Trotman carefully planted continued to sprout, leaf out, blossom, and bear fruit. 7 companies came to Silicon Valley to set up factories in 1955, and the number increased to 32 in 1960, and by the time the Stanford Research Park was formally established in 1965, nearly 70 high-tech companies were already concentrated here, with a starry-eyed crowd surrounding Stanford University; among them, Hewlett-Packard leased more than 1 million square feet of land. In the late 70's, Hewlett and Packard jointly donated a modern "Terman Building" to Stanford University in memory of their mentor. The garage where they started their business was officially named the "Birthplace of Silicon Valley" by the State of California in 1989, and has become a treasured U.S. historical artifact.
From the 1950s through the 1960s, Hewlett-Packard entered a period of rapid expansion. In Hewlett and Packard's planning, it not only insisted on technological innovation, the development of new products, but also a series of acquisitions, the company's tentacles quickly into many areas of electronic equipment. For example, in 1951, another graduate student of Professor Terman Al Balliett while studying for his degree, for Hewlett-Packard developed a high-speed frequency counter HP524A, so that the time required to measure high frequency, from the original 10 minutes down to 2 seconds. Barrett led the design team to develop more and more related products, and its cumulative sales amounted to one billion dollars. Another example, from 1958, Hewlett-Packard first acquired a graphic recorder manufacturing company in California, F. L. Moseley, among the plotter industry, in 1961, once again acquired Sanborn, breaking into the field of electronic medical equipment; 1965, it is the same way to buy the Pennsylvania F & amp; M Technology, forcibly into the territory of analytical instrumentation. Such acquisitions or mergers and acquisitions, has continued to the end of the 1990s: in 1989, even the early dominant workstation computers - Apollo Computer Corporation also became HP's "in the bag"; in 1997, in order to enhance the company's strength to support e-commerce In 1997, in order to strengthen the company's strength to support e-commerce, Hewlett-Packard also electronic payment system maker VeriFone "for themselves".
In every sense of the word, 1957 was "a year of important turning points" (Packard's words) for HP. First, in November of that year, Hewlett-Packard stock went public for the first time, and the company's market value soared to $48 million; second, the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which enabled Hewlett-Packard to rapidly develop overseas markets, and set up offices and production bases in Europe. These, however, were not as important as another major event that year, which not only established HP's development objectives, but also affected the computer industry's business management approach to change.
About 70 kilometers north of San Francisco, there is a hotel called Sonoma (Sonoma), in early 1957, Hewlett and Packard brought more than 20 senior managers here, held a two-day summit. Packard told the group that Hewlett-Packard now had more than 1,200 people, and that even though the company had grown, it was important to maintain the close-knit atmosphere of a small company. And Hewlett emphasized that Hewlett-Packard's belief should be that anyone who believes that they are willing to work hard and can work creatively will succeed if they are given the right environment. During the meeting, Hewlett and Packard presented a series of company tenets, drafted beforehand, to the participants for discussion. Initially, there were six purposes*** (profit, customers, business areas, development, employees and civic duty), the basic core of which was "the customer first, the importance of the individual, and strive for profit". These purposes were later modified many times, and around them to develop a variety of planning and specific practices, formed by the industry known as the "HP Way" (HP Way) business management model.
From the garage of the car out of the Hewlett-Packard again on a new level: in 1962, the company was listed for the first time by Fortune magazine in the list of the nation's largest 500 companies, although only ranked 460th. 1964, in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the birth of the company, Hewlett formally served as President, and Packard served as Chairman of the Board of Directors; 1965, Hewlett-Packard's operating revenues of more than $ 16.5 million, with 9,000 employees. million dollars and 9,000 employees.
Hewlett was not a computer company in the mid-1960s, however; the computer industry was the domain of IBM and DEC. Packard visited DEC and Wangan Computer, and he even thought of buying DEC for $25 million, but for various reasons the deal didn't work out. 1964, in the spirit of the "HP Way," two engineers decided to try their hand at making computers themselves. Kay Magleby and Paul Stoft suggested to Packard that they could design a controller that would connect HP's electronic test instruments to printers and plotters to automate operations. Packard then appointed Magleby to form a team that completed HP's first electronic computer, the HP2116, in September of that year, which soon evolved into the HP2110 series of computer products; the technical backbone of the team would later become the core of the company's HP computer division in Cupertino, Silicon Valley.
In photographs, the HP2116 computer didn't look like a computer at all, because it was supposed to be a controller for an electronic instrument. HP salespeople soon realized that many customers were buying the HP2116 on its own, rather than as a set of automated electronic measuring instruments. In other words, the HP2116 sold much better as a stand-alone computer than as an instrument controller. Hewlett and Packard finally realized the significance of this information -- HP had to keep up with the trend, redeploy its corporate strategy, and stride into the computer age with technological innovation.
Cupertino's engineers thought further ahead than their bosses, and they quickly developed a prototype 32-bit computer. Immediately embarking on the project, dubbed "Omega," would have meant a head-on confrontation with IBM. Hewlett took stock of the situation and told the engineers, "Don't attack a fortified hill, especially if the army on the hill is stronger than you are." He ordered the project canceled for the time being. However, several key managers and engineers, unwilling to let go of the project, continued to work on it in the back room without their bosses' knowledge, but adjusted their goal to a 16-bit model, and in 1972, the machine they had completed "privately" was introduced to the market as Hewlett-Packard's first multifunction computer, the HP3000 minicomputer, which was a big hit with customers.
Hewlett-Packard's greatest contribution to the field of personal computing tools was its pioneering development of the scientific calculator. Arthur C. Clarke, a famous American science fiction writer, wrote a science fiction novel entitled "Traveling in the Cosmic Space of 2001". One day, he fantasized about what kind of computing tools computer engineers would use in the future, and drew a sketch. 1968 Christmas Eve, someone told him that Hewlett-Packard was selling a HP9100A desktop calculator. Clark immediately chipped in and bought one, and was surprised to find that the HP9100A looked exactly like the sketch he had drawn.
The inventor of the HP9100A desktop calculator was a young engineer named Tom Osborne, who had previously designed a typewriter-sized electronic calculator while working for another company. Osborne pitched his invention to a number of companies, but no one paid any attention. Hewlett and Packard saw the commercial promise of the machine and immediately sent a development team to work with Osborne. Because of the lack of large-scale integrated circuits at the time, the design of the HP9100A was exceptionally complex, with 14 layers of printed circuit boards.After the completion of the HP9100A, the Hewlett-Packard engineers involved in the development of the HP9100 were given another task by Hewlett - to "shrink" the HP9100 to fit in the HP9100. Shrink" to fit in a shirt pocket. The "shrunken" pocket-sized machine would still have the ability to calculate trigonometric, logarithmic, and hyperbolic functions. A veteran business marketer warned Hewlett that there would be no market for pocket machines, as people were used to calculating rulers. But Hewlett argued that the logarithmic ruler invented by Auguste more than 300 years ago should have been phased out long ago, and he was convinced that people would love Hewlett-Packard's "electronic ruler.
Hewlett was right: In 1972, Hewlett-Packard announced the HP35, a "handheld" scientific calculator. Weighing 255 grams and with 35 buttons (that's why it was named the HP35), this pocket-sized machine did everything a calculator could do quickly and easily, and sold for just $395. Within three years, the HP35 was a hit, with 300,000 units sold. After that, in 1973, Hewlett-Packard quickly launched the first ultra-compact business calculator HP80; in 1974 followed by the introduction of the programmable calculator HP65; in 1979, the development of the first numerical and alphabetic calculator can display the calculator HP41C ...... the sales of such calculators and their descendants totaled more than 15 million units, which has made the traditional logarithmic calculator a successor to the traditional calculator. The total sales of these calculators and their descendants have now exceeded 15 million units, making the traditional logarithmic calculator ruler completely obsolete.
Hewlett-Packard also missed a huge opportunity to lead the world in the rolling wave of personal computers. As we all know, Jobs and Wozniak were looking for a partner before they founded Apple in 1976. As a Hewlett-Packard engineer Wozniak first looked for Hewlett-Packard, but Hewlett-Packard refused their request, forcing Wozniak to sell his beloved HP calculator as start-up capital, and Jobs **** with the flag of Apple. Hewlett-Packard lost the chance to be the flag bearer of the personal computer, but they were soon on board after all. In order to maintain the company's youthful vigor, in 1977 Hewlett and Packard chose Stanford graduate John Young (H. Young), 46, to be the company's president and legal successor, and had him take over as chief executive officer (CEO) the following year. During John Young's tenure, Hewlett-Packard launched its first personal computer, the HP85, in 1980; developed the HP9000 computer in 1982 using 32-bit "superchip" technology, and concentrated its strengths on advancing to personal computer printers.
Hewlett-Packard achieved great success in all areas of computers in the 1980s. As early as 1982, Hewlett-Packard launched its first laser printer HP2680, the volume of the refrigerator so large, the price of more than 100,000 U.S. dollars, spearheading the launch of the printer to update the revolution. 1984, it can be connected to the PC inkjet printers and laser printers. 1990, Hewlett-Packard launched the price of inexpensive laser printers LaserJet. Packard, one of the founders of HP, proudly claimed that the LaserJet had become synonymous with laser printers and was recognized by the industry as the world standard. By 1993, the company had rolled out its 10 millionth laser printer and had sold more than 20 million printers of all types.
Both Hewlett and Packard retired in the early 1990s, but continued to participate in board decisions, and in 1992, when John Young turned 60, Hewlett and Packard agreed that they should select a younger "helmsman" for the company while they were still alive. The board of directors decided that L. Platt was the best choice, and asked the 51-year-old master's degree in business administration to take over as president and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, who passed away on March 26, 1996, and Platt took on the role of chairman of the board of directors, combining the three roles in one. Under his command, Hewlett-Packard successfully implemented a diversified business strategy and maintained rapid growth, not only reaching the top three on the list of global personal computer manufacturers, but also climbing to 14th in the U.S. and 42nd globally on the Fortune 500 list of companies in 1998.
As the largest company in Silicon Valley, the Hewlett-Packard road has been traveled for more than 60 years. Not only is it a heavyweight computer and related products company, but it is also responsible for the development and sale of measuring instruments, and in the face of increasingly fierce competition, it is inevitable that it will lose sight of the other.
On March 2, 1999, Pratt announced a stunning move: Hewlett-Packard would be split in two to implement a strategic reorganization plan. The Test and Measurement Products, Components, Chemical Analysis, and Medical Instruments divisions joined together to form the new Measurement Instruments Company; while the Computer and Related Divisions continued to carry the HP name and were reorganized as HP Computing and Imaging Products. From here on out, the eyes of the computer industry will be focused on the lighter HP Computing and Imaging Products.
Computing and Imaging Products, which would remain under the "Hewlett-Packard" name, was formed on July 17, 1999, when Platt appointed Carrie Fiorina as president and CEO of the new company, retiring herself. Fiorina, 45, holds a master's degree in natural sciences from MIT, and has served as president of the global services division of Lucent Technologies, listed by Fortune magazine as "one of the most powerful women in business in the United States". The historic Hewlett-Packard was united in its belief that Frena and her employees were well positioned to write a second generation of Internet success.
September 4, 2001, the IT industry once again broke the amazing news: Hewlett-Packard Co. for $ 25 billion, on a share-for-share basis, the famous computer manufacturer Compaq (Compaq) Computer Corp. This merger will make the two computer, printer and computer server giants into one, thus exceeding the current number one in the personal computer industry, Dell Computer Corporation. The new company will be headquartered in Palo Alto, California, where the former Hewlett-Packard was headquartered, and will employ up to 145,000 people as Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO, and will operate in more than 160 countries, on a par with IT industry leader IBM. The acquisition is a bold and risky move for Frena, who is trying to turn the new HP into a broader provider of computers, software and services.
There is reason to believe that the new Hewlett-Packard will continue to follow the "HP Way".