Bill and Dave's Great Depression Adventure!

They say there is more opportunity during a recession or depression than at any other time in an economic cycle. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were one of the first great success stories that proved that to be true!

Bill and Dave both graduated in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1935. They started their new company in a little side home garage in nearby Palo Alto, during the Great Depression. The name Hewlett and Packard was actually instituted in 1939, after they managed to acquire an initial capital investment of $538 dollars. During the depression that would have been considered a small fortune!

The two boys 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 10 years later in 1957.

Their very first financially successful product was a precision audio oscillator — the Model HP200A. Their innovative design allowed them to sell the Model 200A for $54.40 when competitors were selling less stable oscillators for over $200. One of Bill and Dave's earliest customers was Walt Disney. He bought eight oscillators for use in certifying the Fantasound Surround Sound Systems installed in theaters for the movie Fantasia.

The company was rather unfocused at first, working on a wide range of electronic products for industry and even agriculture. Eventually, they elected to focus on high-quality electronic test and measurement equipment. From the 1940's until well into the 1990's Bill and Dave concentrated on making electronic test equipment: such as signal generators, volt meters, frequency counters, and thermometers along with many other types of related products.

The two boys progressed on their business adventure which grew and grew through the 40's, 50's, 60's, and beyond! In the 1980's, HP registered the HP.com domain name, making it the 9th internet.com domain name ever to be registered. Then in 1999, HP started a sister company called Agilent. This company manufactured everything that was non-computer related, and became an instant success as an $8 billion dollar company with about 30,000 employees, manufacturing scientific instruments, semiconductors, optical networking devices, and electronic test equipment for telecommunications.

HP's posted net revenue in 2010 was $126 billion. Not bad for a couple of guys who figured out how to sell a better product for a cheaper price years before.

And so progressed the adventure of the two friends, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, who took a small startup company during the great depression and turned it into a national icon worth hundreds of billions of dollars over time.

Last we checked, the economy was very recession like. Are you ready to get started?

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"Why are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists solely to make money. Money is an important part of a company's existence, if the company is any good. But a result is not a cause. We have to go deeper and find the real reason for our being." ~ David Packard