Posted on 09/14/2005 4:11:39 PM PDT by Professional Engineer
Hewlett-Packard employees in Palo Alto are working to save the house and one-car garage — dubbed the birthplace of Silicon Valley — where William "Bill" Hewlett and David Packard began manufacturing their first product in 1939.
"We took the whole thing apart and are rebuilding it using the original frame and original 52 boards," said archivist Anna Mancini, who's overseeing the restoration. "We want to do it right. We want to do everything right."
After dismantling the 12-foot-by-18-foot garage, sanding down the boards to eliminate termites and reinforcing the frame to withstand earthquakes, workers nailed the original Douglas-fir planks back into place June 30. Restoration continues on the garden shed and the house, where workers numbered chimney bricks so they could be reassembled in their original places.
Employees are so interested in the project that Mancini maintains a Web site that charts its progress. Started in April 2004 by former Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina, the project may be completed this year. Fiorina was replaced in February by Mark Hurd after earnings slumped.
Hewlett and Packard, who met as students at nearby Stanford University, chose the house at 367 Addison Ave. because it had a garage they could use as a workshop, Mancini said.
"People like to visit some place and say, boy, right here, this happened," said David Kirby, who was hired by Packard in 1962 to set up a public-relations department. "It's part of history."
Packard and his wife, Lucile, shared a three-room apartment on the first floor of the house, built in 1905. Then unmarried, Hewlett lived in the garden shed, an 8-by-18-foot bunkhouse with a dirt floor, a few yards from the garage.
"It was the Depression," Mancini said. "There was not a lot of housing and they were graduate students with not a lot of money."
Hewlett and Packard shared the $45-a-month rent. After Hewlett married and moved out, the bunkhouse became the company's first business office.
Hewlett-Packard was started with $538 in capital, including cash and the value of the used Sears, Roebuck drill press owned by Packard, the company said. Now the world's largest maker of computer printers, Hewlett-Packard had earnings of $3.5 billion on sales of $79.9 billion last year.
The company's Web site includes a photo of Hewlett and Packard at work in the garage around the time they developed their first product, an audio oscillator used by sound engineers. Mancini used the image to figure out how the place looked, with its exposed wiring and pitched roof.
"It was pretty empty," she said. "Just a few tools."
One of the duo's first customers was Walt Disney Studios, which bought eight oscillators to test a sound system designed for the animated movie "Fantasia," released in 1940.
After giving up the rental in 1940, Hewlett and Packard didn't visit the garage again until 1989. Kirby said he had to prod them into attending ceremonies to mark the company's 50th anniversary.
"I had Bill and Dave walk up the driveway and go into the old garage, and they started reminiscing," said Kirby, 81, who co-edited "The HP Way," Hewlett and Packard's book detailing the origins of the company. "When they came back down the driveway, the employees who'd come from around the world to attend the ceremony — boy, they were cheering and applauding."
Packard died in 1996, Hewlett in 2001.
Hewlett-Packard bought the property in 2000, 13 years after the garage was designated California Registered Landmark No. 976. Kirby said he nicknamed the garage "the birthplace of Silicon Valley" in 1989, which amused Hewlett and Packard.
"'The birthplace, really?' Bill Hewlett said to me," said Kirby, who retired from Hewlett-Packard in 1989. "'How were you able to stretch it to that?' "
"Bill and Dave never cared much about the past," Kirby said when asked what the company founders might have thought of the renovation. "If you brought up something about past history, they'd just wave their hands and say 'That's all gone. Let's talk about the future.' "
Mancini doesn't know how much the company paid for the property, which now sits among multimillion-dollar homes in a tree-lined neighborhood about 30 miles south of San Francisco. The site is just a 20-minute drive from another famous garage in Los Altos, where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple Computer. Jobs and Wozniak met as teenagers in 1968 while working at Hewlett-Packard.
Hewlett-Packard has no plans to turn the site into a tourist destination. Instead, the property will probably be used occasionally for small meetings, said Sid Espinosa, a company spokesman.
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
Ken Hendrickson, left, and Jimmy Reyes work on the restoration of the "HP garage" in Palo Alto, Calif. Hewlett-Packard employees are so interested in the project that the company archivist maintains a Web site that charts its progress.
ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE
This 1939 file photo shows David Packard, left, and Bill Hewlett developing the audio oscillator. The pair founded Hewlett-Packard in this rented garage.
bttt
Considering the dubious (euphemism for purely evil) projects funded by the wealth these guys generated, that house should rank right in there with Lenin's Tomb.
What...no pics of Carly? I thought she had something to do w/ HP's success.
They or their endowment?
Any examples?
In 2000, the Packard Foundation lavished $122.7 million of $614 million total grants on projects in the field of "population." This included a $10 million gift to the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) Foundation for its Choice for America campaign. The Packard Foundation's population grants to date in 2001 again support a "who's who" list of pro- abortion organizations, including Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation.The foundation was started in 1964 by David Packard (1912-1996), co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard Company, and Lucile Salter Packard (1914-1987). Among the foundation's beliefs are that " Together, universities, national institutions, community groups, youth agencies, family planning centers, and hospitals constitute a great American tradition that complements government efforts to focus on society's needs."
I wasn't Hewlett or Packard but the foundation that Packard funded. Sadly this is what frequently happens when someone establishes a trust or fundation. It passes from their hands and moves completely away from their desired ends. The Ford Foundation is certainly another extreme example.
I don't know all the details of the foundation, but this one is a fairly recent creation, and it's been funding leftist anti-life causes for as long as I can remember. (Check out the funding on some of those PBS abominations.) Packard didn't die til 1996.
snicker
A fund or trust can run directly off of the reservation even if the founder is still alive. Once in place, trusted personnel can take any direction unless the fund is under the direct control of the founder. This frequently isn't the case.
Look at the Olin trust. It was set up to engage in conservative activities and then to dissolve after one generation. Olin realized the weakness of trusts and ensured that his wouldn't fall into the trap of heading in a direction that he would not have approved of.
Now if they would only restore customer service back in this country.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.