Hewlett-Packard co-founder, high-tech giant, dies
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William R. Hewlett, the surviving member of the duo who all but invented Silicon Valley in a Palo Alto, Calif. garage 62 years ago, died yesterday. He was 87.
Mr. Hewlett died quietly in his sleep at his Palo Alto home, according to a statement from Hewlett-Packard.
After flipping a coin to determine whose name would go first, Mr. Hewlett and Stanford University classmate David Packard founded Hewlett-Packard in 1939 with combined capital of $538 borrowed from their engineering professor.
Their inaugural product, assembled by hand in that one-car garage, was a Hewlett invention: an audio oscillator capable of generating high-quality audio signals at low cost for communications and defense applications.
Designated the HP200B to foster the impression it was made by an established company, its first major sale went to Walt Disney Studios, which ordered eight at $71.50 each to help develop the soundtrack for "Fantasia."
"In the beginning, we did anything to bring in a nickel," Mr. Hewlett once recalled. "We had a bowling-lane foul-line indicator. We had a thing that would make a urinal flush automatically as soon as a guy came in front of it. We had a shock machine to make people lose weight."
From that start Mr. Hewlett, Packard and their management team built the company into a worldwide leader in high technology. Hewlett-Packard today boasts annual sales of nearly $50 billion and a work force of more than 88,500.
Mr. Hewlett's stock in the company made him one of America's wealthiest individuals; he was ranked No. 26 last year by Forbes magazine, with an estimated net worth of $9 billion.
But the company's impact on its industry and its region goes well beyond the volume of its sales or the personal wealth it created. By encouraging other entrepreneurs through investments and joint ventures - and providing incipient entrepreneurs with the management skills they needed to form their own companies - Hewlett and Packard helped create a uniquely communal spirit across what was known then as the Santa Clara Valley and since the mid-1970s as Silicon Valley.
In a videotaped statement issued yesterday, Hewlett-Packard Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina called Mr. Hewlett a "revered leader" and credited him with creating the corporate culture of teamwork, uncompromising quality and professional respect often referred to as "the HP way." "It is really this culture which distinguishes Hewlett-Packard from all other companies," she said.
Technology followers all over the valley remarked that Mr. Hewlett's death signified the passing of the original generation of high-tech entrepreneurs.
"Today marks the final passing of their era, but their spirit lives on in every company in this valley," said Steven Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple Computer and at one time an HP factory worker. According to Apple legend, Jobs and his partner, another HP employee named Steve Wozniak, founded their own company in frustration at HP's refusal to market a personal computer Wozniak had devised.
William Redington Hewlett was born May 20, 1913, in Ann Arbor, Mich. At the age of 3 his family moved to California where his father joined the faculty of Stanford Medical School.
Mr. Hewlett garnered a recommendation to Stanford University largely because of the prominence of his late father. At the university he met Packard and they came under the influence of engineering professor Frederick Terman, who would help guide their academic careers and advise them on the founding of their pioneering company.
That happened in 1938, after Mr. Hewlett completed graduate study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Packard returned West from an engineering job at General Electric. They moved into modest accommodations in Palo Alto.
The premises also included an unprepossessing peak-roofed garage, which the two men requisitioned as a workshop to assemble and spray-paint their audio oscillators.
World War II redoubled demand for Hewlett-Packard's line of electronics devices, and by 1947, with annual revenues of $1.5 million, the partnership was incorporated. The company went public in 1957.
Packard, who died in 1996, was to provide HP's business acumen and step forward as its public and ceremonial face.
Mr. Hewlett was happier rubbing shoulders with the company's engineers on the laboratory floor, which he described as "management by walking around."
It was not unusual for even the most junior staff members to run into Mr. Hewlett in the company lunchroom and get invited upstairs to meet the senior engineers working on innovative new products.
Within the company Mr. Hewlett was a valued stimulator of innovation. At one point, enchanted by the miniaturization possibilities inherent in semiconductor technology, he challenged his staff to design a calculator that could fit in a shirt pocket. The resulting product, known as the HP 35 because of the number of its keys, was launched in 1972 and transformed the slide rule from an indispensable engineer's tool into a relic overnight.
Mr. Hewlett retired as chief executive officer of HP in 1978 and served as chairman of the executive committee until 1983. He was known as a philanthropist, having founded the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation with his late wife, and co-founded the Public Policy Institute of California, a multidisciplinary research institute, with a $70 million endowment in 1995. He received the National Medal of Science, America's highest scientific honor, in 1985.
Mr. Hewlett is survived by his wife, Rosemary; five children from his first marriage; and five stepchildren from his second marriage. His first wife, Flora, died in 1977.