in
Palo Alto, where Hewlett and Packard began the company
Bill Hewlett and
David Packard graduated with degrees in
electrical engineering from
Stanford University in 1935. The company started in a
garage in
Palo Alto during a fellowship they had with past professor
Frederick Terman at Stanford during the
Great Depression, whom they considered a mentor. In 1938, Packard and Hewlett began part-time work in a rented garage with an initial capital investment of . In 1939, Hewlett and Packard decided to formalize their partnership. They tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard (HP) or Packard-Hewlett. Hewlett and Packard's first financially successful product was a precision audio
oscillator known as the
HP 200A, which used a small incandescent
light bulb as a temperature dependent
resistor in a critical portion of the circuit, and a
negative feedback loop to stabilize the amplitude of the output sinusoidal waveform. This allowed the HP 200A to be sold for when competitors were selling less stable oscillators for over . The 200 series of generators continued production until at least 1972 as the 200AB, still tube-based but improved in design through the years. One of the company's earliest customers was Bud Hawkins, chief
sound engineer for
Walt Disney Studios, who bought eight HP 200B audio oscillators (at each) to be used in the animated film
Fantasia. HP's profit at the end of 1939, its first full year of business, was on revenues of . In 1942, they built their first building at 395 Page Mill Road and were awarded the
Army-Navy "E" Award in 1943. HP employed 200 people and produced the audio oscillator, a wave analyzer, distortion analyzers, an audio-signal generator, and the Model 400A
vacuum-tube voltmeter during the war. but Hewlett had to serve as an officer in the
Army Signal Corps after being called to active duty. HP was incorporated on August 18, 1947, with Packard as president. Sales reached in 1951 with 215 employees. The company went public on November 6, 1957. Instruments and
calculators were some of the original HP products that used semiconductor devices. During the 1960s, HP partnered with
Sony and
Yokogawa Electric in Japan to develop several high-quality products. The products were not a huge success, as there were high costs involved in building HP-looking products in Japan. In 1963, HP and Yokogawa formed the joint venture Yokogawa-Hewlett-Packard to market HP products in Japan. HP bought Yokogawa Electric's share of Hewlett-Packard Japan in 1999. HP spun off the small company Dynac to specialize in digital equipment. The name was picked so that the HP logo could be turned upside down to be a reflected image of the logo of the new company. Dynac was eventually renamed Dymec and folded back into HP in 1959. HP experimented with using
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) minicomputers with its instruments, but entered the computer market in 1966 with the
HP 2100 /
HP 1000 series of minicomputers after it decided that it would be easier to build another small design team than deal with DEC. The minicomputers had a simple
accumulator-based design with two accumulator registers and, in the HP 1000 models, two
index registers. The series was produced for 20 years in spite of several attempts to replace it, and was a forerunner of the
HP 9800 and
HP 250 series of desktop and business computers. Beginning in 1961, Hewlett-Packard was listed on the
New York Stock Exchange (as well as the now-closed
Pacific Exchange) under its own
ticker symbol, "HWP". enabled the first commercial
WYSIWYG presentation program,
BRUNO, that later became the program HP-Draw on the HP 3000. Although scoffed at in the formative days of computing, HP surpassed IBM as the world's largest technology vendor in terms of sales. HP was identified by
Wired magazine as the producer of the world's first device to be called a personal computer: the
Hewlett-Packard 9100A, introduced in 1968. HP called it a desktop calculator because, as Hewlett said: "If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our customers' computer gurus because it didn't look like an
IBM. We therefore decided to call it a calculator, and all such nonsense disappeared." An engineering triumph at the time, the logic circuit was produced without any
integrated circuits, and the CPU assembly was entirely executed in discrete components. With
CRT display, magnetic-card storage, and printer, the price was around $5,000. The machine's keyboard was a cross between the keyboard of a scientific calculator and the keyboard of an adding machine. There was no alphabetic keyboard.
Apple co-founder
Steve Wozniak originally designed the
Apple I computer while working at HP and offered it to it under its
right of first refusal to his work. It did not take it up as the company wanted to stay in scientific, business, and industrial markets. Wozniak said that HP "turned him down five times", but that his loyalty to HP made him hesitant to start Apple with
Steve Jobs. The company earned global respect for a variety of products. They introduced the world's first handheld scientific electronic
calculator in 1972 (the
HP-35), the first handheld programmable in 1974 (the
HP-65), the first alphanumeric, programmable, expandable in 1979 (the
HP-41C), and the first symbolic and graphing calculator, the
HP-28C. Like its scientific and business calculators, HP
oscilloscopes,
logic analyzers, and other measurement instruments had a reputation for sturdiness and usability. HP introduced the Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus (HPIB) computer peripheral interface (later cloned by National Instruments as GPIB and standardized by the
IEEE as
IEEE-488) on its relay actuator products in 1973. HPIB was later integrated into most high end test & measurement equipment it produced from 1980 onward. As early as 1977, HP began production of the HP856x
spectrum analyzers to complement its RF power meters and sensors capable of measuring signals in excess of 20 GHz. HP also produced configurable chassis based
sweep generators capable of generating signals to 20 GHz. Other T&M products of the time included lab grade multimeters, microwave frequency counters, RF amplifiers, high accuracy microwave detectors, lab grade power supplies and more. These products were succeeded by modernized versions as well as the introduction of the scalar and
vector network analyzer product lines prior to the business being spun off into
Agilent Technologies. The
HP 9800 series of technical desktop computers started in 1971 with the 9810A. The
HP Series 80 started in 1979 with the 85. Some of these machines used a version of the
BASIC programming language, which was available immediately after they were switched on, and used a proprietary magnetic tape for storage. HP computers were similar in capabilities to the much later
IBM Personal Computer, though the limitations of available technology forced prices to be high. In 1978, Hewlett stepped down as CEO and was succeeded by
John A. Young.
1980s HP expanded into
South Africa in the 1980s. Activists supporting
divestment from South Africa accused HP of "automating
apartheid". Sales reached $6.5 billion in 1985 with 85,000 employees. On March 3, 1986, HP registered the HP.com domain name, making it the
ninth internet .com domain to be registered. In 1987, the Palo Alto garage where Hewlett and Packard started their business was designated as a
California Historical Landmark.
1990s In the 1990s, HP expanded its computer product line, which initially had been targeted at university, research, and business users, to reach consumers. In 1995, HP entered into the home and home office market for the first time with the introduction of the
HP Pavilion brand of personal computers, HP also grew through acquisitions: it bought
Apollo Computer in 1989 and
Convex Computer in 1995. In 1992, Young was succeeded by
Lewis E. Platt, and in 1993 Packard stepped down from the board, with Platt succeeding Packard as chairman. In 1993, HP acquired
Advanced Design System from Pathwave. The ADS suite of RF simulation tools was spun off into Agilent in 1999 along with related T&M business units, all of which were carried forward into the spinoff of Agilent into Keysight. Later in the decade, HP opened hpshopping.com as an independent subsidiary to sell online, direct to consumers; in 2005, the store was renamed "HP Home & Home Office Store". From 1995 to 1999, Hewlett-Packard were sponsors of the English football team
Tottenham Hotspur. In 1999, all of the businesses not related to computers, storage, and imaging were spun off from HP to form
Agilent Technologies. Agilent's spin-off was the largest
initial public offering in the history of
Silicon Valley, and it created an company with about 30,000 employees, manufacturing
scientific instruments,
semiconductors, optical networking devices, and
electronic test equipment for
telecom and wireless,
research and development, and production. In July 1999, HP appointed
Carly Fiorina as the first female
CEO of a Fortune-20 company in the
Dow Jones Industrial Average. Fiorina received a larger signing offer than any of her predecessors. The same year, Fiorina articulated a set of "
rules of the garage" in an attempt to reinterpret the spirit of the company's founders.
Sales to Iran despite sanctions In 1997, HP started selling its products in
Iran through a European subsidiary and a
Dubai-based Middle Eastern distributor, despite U.S. export sanctions prohibiting such deals imposed by
Bill Clinton's
1995 executive orders. The story was initially reported by
The Boston Globe, and it triggered an inquiry by the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). HP responded that products worth 120 million were sold in fiscal year 2008 for distribution via Redington Gulf, a company based in the Netherlands, and that as these sales took place through a foreign subsidiary, HP had not violated sanctions. On May 3, 2002, after passing a shareholder vote, HP officially announced the merger with Compaq. The newly-merged company would officially launch five days later on May 7, 2002. Prior to this, plans had been in place to consolidate the companies' product teams and product lines. As Compaq acquired
Tandem Computers in 1997 and
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1998, HP gained control of both acquired companies' product lines, and offered support for the
Tandem NonStop family (now owned by Hewlett Packard Enterprise) and DEC products
PDP-11,
VAX and
Alpha for quite some time until the later years where support gradually dwindled. Both the DEC PDP-11 and VAX were discontinued years before the merger, and HP supported Alpha until April 2007. The merger was preceded by a proxy fight in 2001 with numerous large HP shareholders, in particular Bill Hewlett's son Walter and other descendants of the business founders, objecting to the merger, only approving it reluctantly. The new ticker symbol is a combination of the two previous symbols, "
HWP" and "C
PQ" respectively, showing the significance of the alliance. HP then became a major producer in
desktop computers, laptops, and servers for many different markets in the coming years. In 2002,
Mscape was established as a
mobile media gaming platform that could be used to create
location-based games. HP would release new models of laptops under the
Pavilion name during the early-to-mid 2000s, it being the
dv1000 series (which includes the dv1040 and the later dv1658 models) in August 2004 and the dv4000 and dv8000 series in 2005. In January 2005, following years of underperformance, which included HP's Compaq merger that fell short and disappointing earning reports, the board asked Fiorina to resign as chair and chief executive officer of the company, which she did on February 9, 2005. After her departure, HP's stock jumped 6.9 percent. Robert Wayman, chief financial officer of HP, served as interim CEO while the board undertook a formal search for a replacement.
Mark Hurd of
NCR Corporation was hired to take over as CEO and president, effective April 1, 2005. Hurd was the board's top choice given the revival of NCR that took place under his leadership. That same year, HP's share price skyrocketed due to consistent results in the last couple quarters of the year with Hurd's plan to cut back HP's workforce and lower costs. HP was delisted from the Pacific Exchange (now closed with trades going through the
NYSE Arca platform) on May 1, 2006, but continues to trade on the New York Stock Exchange as well as
Nasdaq. HP introduced a global marketing campaign for its line of personal computers in May 2006 under the tagline "The Computer is Personal Again", coinciding with the launch of its new line of consumer and business products that same month. The campaign aimed at bringing back the computer as a powerful personal tool, utilizing viral marketing and sophisticated visuals, and had its own website. The ads featured
Pharrell,
Petra Nemcova,
Mark Burnett,
Jay-Z,
Gwen Stefani, and
Shaun White. In the first few years of Hurd's tenure as CEO, HP's stock price more than doubled. By the end of the 2007 fiscal year, HP reached the mark for the first time. The company's annual revenue reached , allowing HP to overtake competitor IBM. On May 13, 2008, HP and
Electronic Data Systems (EDS) announced that they had signed a definitive agreement under which HP would purchase EDS. On June 30, HP announced that the waiting period under the
Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 had expired. "The transaction still requires EDS stockholder approval and regulatory clearance from the European Commission and other non-U.S. jurisdictions and is subject to the satisfaction or waiver of the other closing conditions specified in the merger agreement." The agreement was finalized on August 26, 2008, at $13 billion, and it was publicly announced that EDS would be re-branded. The first targeted layoff of 24,600 former EDS workers was announced on September 15, 2008. (The company's 2008 annual report gave the number as 24,700, to be completed by end of 2009.) This round was factored into the purchase price as a liability against goodwill. As of September 23, 2009, EDS was known as HP Enterprise Services (now known as
DXC Technology). On November 11, 2009,
3Com and Hewlett-Packard announced that the latter would be acquiring 3Com for in cash. The acquisition was one of the biggest in size among a series of takeovers and acquisitions by technology giants to push their way to become one-stop shops. Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007, tech giants have constantly felt the pressure to expand beyond their current market niches.
Dell purchased
Perot Systems to move into the technology consulting business area previously dominated by
IBM. Hewlett-Packard's latest move marked its diversification into enterprise networking gear market dominated by
Cisco.
2010–2012 computer, a type of
notebook computer On April 28, 2010,
Palm, Inc. and HP announced that the latter would buy the former for in cash and debt. Adding Palm handsets to the HP product line created some overlap with the
iPAQ series of mobile devices, but was thought to significantly improve HP's mobile presence as iPAQ devices had not been selling well. Buying Palm, Inc. gave HP a library of valuable patents and the mobile operating platform,
webOS. On July 1, 2010, the acquisition of Palm, Inc. was finalized. Purchasing its webOS was a big gamble to build HP's own ecosystem. On July 1, 2011, HP launched its first tablet,
HP TouchPad, which brought webOS to tablet devices. On September 2, 2010, HP won the
bidding war for
3PAR with a a share offer () that Dell declined to match. After HP acquired Palm Inc., it phased out the Compaq brand. On August 6, 2010, Hurd
resigned amid controversy and CFO
Cathie Lesjak assumed the role of interim CEO. Hurd had turned HP around and was widely regarded as one of
Silicon Valley's star CEOs, and under his leadership, HP became the largest computer company in the world when measured by total revenue. He was accused of
sexual harassment against a colleague, though the allegations were deemed baseless. The investigation led to questions concerning some of his expenses and the lack of disclosure related to the friendship. Some observers have argued that Hurd was innocent, but the board asked for his resignation to avoid
negative public relations. Public analysis was divided between those who saw it as a commendable tough action by HP and those who saw it as an ill-advised, hasty, and expensive reaction, that ousted a capable leader who had turned the business around. At HP, Hurd oversaw a series of acquisitions worth over $20 billion, which allowed the company to expand into services of networking equipment and smartphones. HP shares dropped 8.4% in after-hours trading, hitting a 52-week low with a $9 billion reduction in market capitalization.
Larry Ellison publicly attacked HP's board for Hurd's ousting, stating that the HP board had "made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago". On September 30, 2010,
Léo Apotheker was named HP's new CEO and president. His appointment sparked a strong reaction from Ellison, who complained that Apotheker had been in charge of
SAP when one of its subsidiaries was systematically stealing software from Oracle. SAP accepted that its subsidiary, which has now closed, illegally accessed Oracle intellectual property. Following Hurd's departure, HP was seen to be problematic by the market, with margins falling and them failing to establish themselves in major new markets such as cloud and mobile services. Apotheker's strategy was to broadly aim at disposing hardware, whilst moving into the more profitable
software services sector. On August 18, 2011, HP announced that it would strategically exit the
smartphone and
tablet computer business, and focus on higher-margin "strategic priorities of Cloud, solutions and software with an emphasis on enterprise, commercial and government markets". It also contemplated selling off its personal computer division or spinning it off into a separate company, and quitting PC development while continuing to sell servers and other equipment to business customers, which was a strategy undertaken by IBM in 2005. On November 1, 2010, the classic 1979 Hewlett-Packard logo was discontinued and replaced with a new circle HP logo, with a larger and thinner wormark, for corporate branding. The 2008 circle variant was continued to be used as the secondary logo. This also made the 1999 symbol-only variant was also discontinued on the same day. The last product to use this logo was the HP ProLiant DL380 G7. HP's stock dropped by about a further 40% after the company abruptly announced a number of decisions: to discontinue its webOS device business (mobile phones and tablet computers), the intent to sell its
personal computer division (at the time HP was the largest personal computer manufacturer in the world), and to acquire British
big data software firm
Autonomy for a 79%
premium, seen externally as an "absurdly high" price Media analysts described HP's actions as a "botched strategy shift" and a "chaotic" attempt to rapidly
reposition HP and enhance earnings. HP's CFO objected to the Autonomy acquisition. with
Raymond J. Lane as executive chairman. Although Apotheker served barely ten months, he received over in compensation. Weeks later, HP announced that a review had concluded its PC division was too integrated and critical to business operations, and the company reaffirmed its commitment to the Personal Systems Group. On March 21, 2012, HP said its printing and PC divisions would become one unit headed by Todd Bradley from the PC division, and printing chief Vyomesh Joshi left the company. On May 23, 2012, HP announced plans to lay off approximately 27,000 employees, after posting a profit decline of 31% in the second quarter of 2012. Profits declined because of the growing popularity of smart phones, tablets, and other mobile devices, which slowed down personal computer sales. On May 30, 2012, HP unveiled its first
net zero energy data center, which used solar energy and other renewable sources instead of traditional power grids. On July 10, 2012, HP's Server Monitoring Software was discovered to have a
previously unknown security vulnerability. A security warning was given to customers about two vulnerabilities, and a
patch addressing the issues was released. One month later, HP's official training center was hacked and defaced by a Pakistani hacker known as Hitcher to demonstrate a Web vulnerability. On September 10, 2012, HP revised its restructuring figures and started cutting 29,000 jobs. In November 2012, HP
wrote off almost related to the Autonomy acquisition, which became the subject of intense litigation, as HP accused Autonomy's previous management of fraudulently exaggerating Autonomy's financial position and called in law enforcement and regulators in both countries. Autonomy's previous management accused HP of "textbook"
obfuscation and
finger pointing to protect HP's executives from criticism and conceal HP culpability, their prior knowledge of Autonomy's financial position, and gross mismanagement of Autonomy after acquisition.
2013–2015 On December 31, 2013, HP revised the number of jobs cut from 29,000 to 34,000 up to October 2014. The number of jobs cut until the end of 2013 was 24,600. At the end of 2013 the company had 317,500 employees. On May 22, 2014, HP announced it would cut a further 11,000 to 16,000 jobs, in addition to the 34,000 announced in 2013. Whitman said: "We are gradually shaping HP into a more nimble, lower-cost, more customer and partner-centric company that can successfully compete across a rapidly changing IT landscape." During the June 2014 HP Discover customer event in
Las Vegas, Whitman and Martin Fink announced a project for a radically new computer architecture called
The Machine. Based on
memristors and
silicon photonics, it was supposed to come into commercialization before the end of the decade, and represented 75% of the research activity in HP Labs at the time. On October 6, 2014, HP announced it was going to split into two separate companies to separate its personal computer and printer businesses from its technology services. The split, which was first reported by
The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by other media, resulted in two publicly traded companies on November 1, 2015:
Hewlett Packard Enterprise and
HP Inc. The split was structured so that Hewlett-Packard changed its name to HP Inc. and spun off Hewlett Packard Enterprise as a new publicly traded company. Whitman became chairman of HP Inc. and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise,
Patricia Russo became chairman of the enterprise business, and
Dion Weisler became CEO of HP, Inc. On October 29, 2014, Hewlett-Packard announced its new
Sprout personal computer. In May 2015, the company announced it would be selling its controlling 51 percent stake in its
Chinese data-networking business to
Tsinghua Unigroup for a fee of at least . ==Facilities==