HP’s origins are not much different from other big tech companies like Apple or Microsoft. Despite starting their journey with limited resources, they all managed to mature. nurture a few good ideas and an ecosystem that fosters entrepreneurship. However, Bill Hewlett and David Packard took their first steps as entrepreneurs in an extremely negative economic environment.

Hewlett and Packard graduated from Stanford University in 1935 with a degree in electrical engineering. The right time to start a business project. Interestingly, then Palo Alto it was an oasis in the middle of a vast desert.

Motivated by Frederick Terman, who taught them at Stanford, the two friends decided to set up a small electronics lab in the garage next to the house where David Packard and his wife Lucile had recently moved. Terman had a positive impact on his students and advised many that: don’t leave california At the end of their education, they established their own company around the university.

The garage, which you can see in the cover photo of this article by BrokenSphere, is located at 367 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto and is the same garage Hewlett and Packard rented in 1938. start your business adventure. Currently this area is part of a private museum and is unanimously considered the birthplace of Silicon Valley as we know it today.

The HP200A oscillator was their first product, and Disney was their first customer.

Hewlett and Packard formally founded their company in 1939, years before the birth of the computer industry. Since then, an anecdote with possibly a true basis has persisted, arguing that the two partners used a coin to let fate decide. what would your company name be. One of the options was ‘Packard-Hewlett’ and the other was ‘Hewlett-Packard’ as we might have guessed.

The start-up capital with which they formalized their company amounted to $538, which is equivalent to about 10,688 euros today. It wasn’t enough to start a big project, so they decided to apply their electronics knowledge for fine-tuning, among other products. precision oscillatorAn electronic device designed to generate a periodic signal.

The HP200A oscillator was his first successful offering, and Bud Hawkins was one of his first customers and undoubtedly the most important of them all. Here’s how Hawkins worked: chief sound engineer at Walt Disney. In 1939, the company was working on the production of the legendary movie “Fantasia,” which was released in the late 1940s, and the sound technicians involved with its effects and soundtrack had to prove their consistency in the first movie theaters equipped. to reproduce the innovative stereophonic sound.

Bud Hawkins decided to tour the electronics stores around the bay to find the electronic equipment he needed, and it wasn’t long before he found the garage where the two founders of HP set up their HP200A. This oscillator was more accurate and cost less than half Hawkins decided to buy eight units from Hewlett and Packard.

The HP200A precision electronic oscillator was the first successful product marketed by Hewlett-Packard. He used a small incandescent lamp and a very ingenious circuit that allowed its creators to keep its cost in check.

This sale gave these two entrepreneurs the boost they needed. In fact, HP closed its first year with a profit of over $1,500 at the time, thanks to the Disney employee. It wasn’t, but it wasn’t a bad thing. Proceeds from the sale of successful electronic oscillators allowed Hewlett and Packard to fine-tune them. other more complex electronic devicessuch as radar, spectrum analyzer or harmonic distortion analyzer, among other solutions.

HP’s journey had just begun. The profits they made in their first few years of business allowed Hewlett and Packard to leave the garage where their company was born and build their first building in 1942. In just three years already had about 200 employeesand their product portfolio was wide enough to allow them to see a promising future. And they were not mistaken. The rest is history.

Cover photo: © Broken Globe / Wikimedia Commons

Inside Picture: Colin