Seventy-five years ago (that would be 1939), Stanford University buddies Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard launched the original Silicon Valley garage startup.
On a shoestring budget, the friends invented a series of electronics gadgets sometimes using the Packard family oven to put on finishing touches. Walt Disney Studios was one of their first customers.
Flash forward to June 2014 and HP is one of the biggest tech companies in the world, employing over 330,000 people. HP is digging itself out of some hard times, implementing a multiyear turnaround that's involved laying off up to 50,000 since 2012.
And it's going back to its roots: inventing or advancing new forms of electronics. Earlier this month, HP Labs shows off an ambitious new kind of computer that it hopes will shrink a data center to the size of a refridgerator. The computer, code-named "The Machine," will require HP to invent a new kind of computer memory, perfect a new way to transfer data using light (i.e. photonics), instead of traditional copper wire, and invent a whole new operating system.
But HP is up to the task. It's been inventing hardware for 75 years.
1938: The Valley garage startup
In 1938, at a garage that Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard rented for their startup, the two developed their first product: something called "an audio oscillator" that was used to test high-quality audio frequencies.
HP was founded shortly after, in 1939.
During HP's earliest years, oscillators were used to design and test other electronics including telephones, stereos, radios, and other audio equipment.
In 1999, HP spun out this original business unit into a company called Agilent, which is still going strong today.
And here's the actual garage ...
The garage, shed, and house that launched HP have also been restored and furnished as to represent 1939.
Visitors can see it today at 367 Addison Ave., Palo Alto, California.
1938: The audio oscillator
Here's a 2014 photo of the HP Audio Oscillator 200A, fully restored.
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