History of Computers - Hewlett-Packard

Page created by: Jodi Rybarczyk

Hewlett-Packard is a multinational American technology corporation. HP manufactures a variety of electronic instruments, but their most popular products are printers.

Overview

In 1935, the company Hewlett-Packard began humbly in a Palo Alto garage, during the Great Depression. William Hewlett and David Packard were two recent electrical-engineering graduates from Stanford University. With a mere $538 capital investment, the young men set out to create a company under the guidance of Stanford professor Frederick Terman, who envisioned a Western electronics industry Terman served as their mentor; he even proposed the HP200A precision audio oscillator, their first marketable product. The HP200A introduced an incandescent lamp into the design, effectively solving the problem of regulating the output of the circuit without causing distortion. The HP200A resulted in HP's first big sale. The Walt Disney Company purchased eight oscillators to fine-tune the movie soundtrack for Fantasia.

William Hewlett and David Packard

Bill and Dave formalized their partnership on January 1, 1939. The company gradually began to pick up more orders for electronic instruments, especially with the beginning of World War II. From the 1940s until well into the 1990s the company concentrated on making electronic test equipment. HP followed a unique business model that was unlike any other company of the time. David Packard insisted on a decentralized, egalitarian system that has since been termed "the HP way." During the PC arm's race, HP, who was behind IBM, decided to focus on printers, partnering with IBM by producing the Thinkjet and Laserjet printers, which worked on IBM computers. In 2002, the company, a generally jovial one, was split over whether to but Compaq or not. After two years of fierce debate, HP bought Compaq to become the 2nd (now 1st) largest PC producer in the world. After a couple of poor management choices, HP started to lose sales to competitions such as Dell and Lenovo. HP became less innovative in the computer industry, and started to gear themselves as more of a Printer oriented company as that is what they were making the most money in. On November 1, 2015, HP will officially split into two companies: HP Ink and HP Enterprise. HP Ink will handle the hardware side of HP, while HP Enterprise will handle the software and tech support side.

Significance

Hewlett-Packard technology has evolved over the years. Today, HP manufactures a variety of products, ranging from printers, calculators, digital cameras, scanners, PDAs, servers, computers, laptops, among others. HP is responsible for many of the major breakthroughs in history of computer technology. Additionally, HP introduced society to a new type of business model, a model of equality, and proved it too could be successful. Perhaps most importantly, HP has become the premiere manufacturer and designer of CPU's

Links

• Official Wikipedia Page

• Stanford Article on the Founding Fathers of HP

• HP200A Audio Oscillator