The Hewlett-Packard Company (), commonly known as HP, is one of the world's largest information technology corporations. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States, it has a global presence in the fields of computing, printing, and digital imaging, and also sells software and services.

Company history

---

From 1939 until the seventies

HP was founded as a manufacturer of test and measurement instruments with a States dollar|US$" target="_blank" >^*500 investment in a Palo Alto, CA garage in 1939 by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. They had both graduated from Stanford University in 1934. Their first product was a precision audio oscillator, the Model 200A. Their innovation was the use of a small night-light bulb as a temperature dependent resistor in a critical portion of the circuit. This allowed them to sell the Model 200A for $54.40 when competitors were selling less stable oscillators for over $200. Their company's name, Hewlett-Packard, was derived from their last names and had Bill not won a coin toss, the company today could have been known as Packard-Hewlett. One of the company's earliest customers was Walt Disney Productions, who bought eight Model 200B oscillators (at $71.50 each) for use in testing the Fantasound stereophonic sound system for the movie Fantasia.

First Computers

HP is acknowledged by Wired magazine as the producer of the world's first personal computer, in 1968, the Hewlett-Packard 9100A. HP called it a desktop calculator because, as Bill 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; the assembly of the CPU having been entirely executed in discrete components. With CRT readout, magnetic card storage, and printer the price was around $5000.

More on [ Hewlett-Packard ]

Business Applications - RSS Sponsorship

Microsoft, eat your own dog food
Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:06:12 -0700
"Eating your own dog food" is an odd software development-related term that describes the importance of ensuring that your own developers use the technology they are creating. When Microsoft has hewed closed to this principle, their products have achieved dominant market shares. Unfortunately, Microsoft is not applying this...
MSI Eclipse - First X58 motherboard for Intel Core i7
Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:50:27 -0700
MSI has unveiled details of its new Eclipse motherboard - the company's first X58 motherboard for Intel Core i7. by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
Intel teases shape-shifting programmable matter
Fri, 22 Aug 2008 07:46:30 -0700
Intel CEO Justin Rattner teased his Intel Developer Forum audience with technology of the not-so-disant-future that could take an object design of any imaginable shape, 'hit the print command,' and see the matter take shape. SAN FRANCISCO, CA--Mobile phones in future could be thumb-sized in pockets, and in practically...
Nokia and Sun confirm S40, Java ME vulnerabilities
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:21:26 -0700
According to published reports, Nokia and Sun have both confirmed the existence of serious security problems in the Series 40 and Java Platform Micro Edition Java ME , giving instant credibility to the claims by Polish hacker Adam Gowdiak. Gowdiak left, one of the four LSD researchers...
Pulse provides novel training and tools configuration resource to aid in developer education, preparedness
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:08:42 -0700
MyEclipse maker Genuitec developed Pulse last year to monitor and update the most popular Eclipse plug-ins, but Pulse also has a powerful role in making Java training and tools preferences configuration management more streamlined, automated and extensible. by Dana Gardner
Intel backs Microsoft's concurrent-computing play
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:10:50 -0700
On August 20, Intel rolled out new parallel-processing tools that support Microsoft's concurrent runtime environment that is expected to become a central component of Redmond's next-generation computing model. by Mary Jo Foley

Subscribe to Software RSS feed