A Brief History of Hewlett-Packard Company

Hewlett-Packard, a universal technology company known for its HP labels, was started in Palo Alto, California. Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett (Stanford graduate of 1935) founded their information technology company in 1939. Nobody would have thought their vision would grow to the industrious phenomenon it is today.

Hewlett and Packard’s initial investment was a little over five hundred dollars when they first were formulating their plans. With the help of an advising professor from Stanford (Frederick Terman) they began their small electronics manufacturing corporation. Their corporation was formulated formally in 1947, and then went public in November of 1957.

Their initial electronic device was the audio oscillator. The Walt Disney Company signed on to purchase eight of these Model 200B oscillators. Hewlett and Packard could not have been more excited. After over thirty-two years of sales and improvements, this product was one of the longest selling electronics products of all time.

Taking time to keep creating, the company itself was not focused on any one particular product or need. They produced electronics for means of agriculture and the general needs of industry. Mainly general electronic products were sold by Hewlett-Packard Company in its beginnings.

Then, from the 1950’s, on through the early 1990’s, the company began to narrow their scope of equipment and electronics developed. They focused on test equipment for electronics, including that of voltmeters, signal generators and oscilloscopes. This range of testing products grew to then include accessories, software, and parallel products, etc.

The company then (late 1950‘s), began to mass produce computer and technological hardware and services. Today, Hewlett-Packard has expanded their vision into hundreds of types of: computers, printers, servers, hardware products, storage products, services, etc. The list is ever-ending, and always growing, with new features, and updated services that are now provided worldwide.

The 1970’s is when Hewlett-Packard got their magic leap. The company began to create and produce computing servers. These terminals supplied the consumer with a screen and basic function keys that allowed for non-human services to take place twenty four hours a day, and seven days a week. These terminals, after a range of updates, are now used at basic gasoline stations, as well as ATMs all over the nation.

The company is still headquartered out of Palo Alto, California, but in a much larger property than that of the original garage it started in. Hewlett-Packard also has facilities in locations such as, but not limited to: Singapore, Switzerland, London and Texas. Although a great deal of their business is now completed via distributors and retailers, there are a multitude of individuals that are still consistently working in these locations.

A company that was started simply out of a garage, now markets to individual households, corporations and online distributors. In 2002 Hewlett-Packard merged with well-known company Compaq. Later in 2007, HP was the first IT company to ever report revenues up and over one hundred billion United States dollars. It seems that Hewlett-Packard’s initial investment of a mere five hundred and thirty eight dollars has definitely paid off.

About the Author: Steve Oono is the VP of Sales for Mojo Systems. They are the leading industry provider of Sun servers, HP servers, IBM, Oracle, and Fujitsu hardware and servers. For more information, please visit http://www.gotomojo.com.