Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard graduated in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1935. The company originated in a garage in nearby Palo Alto during a fellowship they had with a past professor, Frederick Terman at Stanford during the Great Depression. Terman was considered a mentor to them in forming Hewlett-Packard. In 1939, Packard and Hewlett established Hewlett-Packard (HP) in Packard's garage with an initial capital investment of US$538. Hewlett and Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett Packard won the coin toss but named their electronics manufacturing enterprise the "Hewlett-Packard Company". HP incorporated on August 18, 1947, and went public on November 6, 1957.
William Reddington Hewlett
William Reddington Hewlett (May 20, 1913 – January 12, 2001) was an engineer and the co-founder, with David Packard, of the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP). He was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, only to move with his family to Oak Brook, Illinois when he was two. However, in less than year, his family moved once again to San Francisco when he was three, to where he spent the rest of his life in the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended Lowell High School and was accepted at Stanford University as a favor to his late father, Albion Walter Hewlett, a former faculty member at the Stanford Medical School who had died of a brain tumor in 1925.
Hewlett received his Bachelor's degree from Stanford University in 1934, an MS degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1936, and the degree of Electrical Engineer from Stanford in 1939. He joined the Kappa Sigma fraternity during his time at Stanford. In 1999, the William R. Hewlett Teaching Center at Stanford was named in his honor. The building is located in the Science and Engineering Quad, adjacent to the David Packard Electrical Engineering Building.
Hewlett attended classes taught by Fred Terman at Stanford and became acquainted with David Packard during his undergraduate work at Stanford. He and Packard began discussing forming a company in August 1937, and founded Hewlett-Packard Company as a partnership on January 1, 1939. A flip of a coin decided the ordering of their names. The company incorporated in 1947 and tendered an initial public offering in 1957. Hewlett was president of the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1954. Also in 1939 he married Flora Lamson, and the couple eventually had five children: Eleanor, Walter, James, William and Mary. There are 12 grandchildren.
He was President of HP from 1964 to 1977, and served as CEO from 1968 to 1978, when he was succeeded by John A. Young. He remained chairman of the executive committee until 1983, and then served as vice chairman of the board until 1987.
A young Steve Jobs, then in grade eight, had called up Hewlett requesting ask a part for a frequency counter that he was building. Hewlett was impressed with Job's gumption and offered him a summer job. Since then, Jobs has considered HP one of the companies that he admired, regarding it among the handful of companies (Disney and Intel were the others) that were built “to last, not just to make money”.
In 1966, Hewlett and his wife founded the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Flora Hewlett died in 1977. In 1978, Hewlett married Rosemary Bradford.
He died of heart failure at Portola Valley, California, on January 12, 2001, and was interred at Los Gatos Memorial Park, San Jose, California.
David Packard
David Packard (September 7, 1912 – March 26, 1996) was a co-founder of Hewlett-Packard (1939), serving as president (1947–1964), CEO (1964–1968), and Chairman of the Board (1964–1968, 1972–1993). He served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1969–1971 during the Nixon administration. Packard was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1988 and is noted for many technological innovations and philanthropic endeavors.