Hewlett-Packard was an American technology company founded in 1939 in a Palo Alto garage — a Silicon Valley pioneer that grew into a global maker of computers, printers, and electronics before splitting in two in 2015.
Hewlett-Packard, commonly known as HP, was founded by William Hewlett and David Packard, two Stanford University electrical-engineering graduates, who began working in 1938 in a rented Palo Alto garage with an initial investment of about $538 and formalized the partnership in 1939. That garage at 367 Addison Avenue is now recognized as the birthplace of Silicon Valley. The company's first products were electronic test instruments; its first customer, Walt Disney Productions, bought eight audio oscillators to help produce the 1940 film Fantasia.
HP went public in 1957 and over the following decades expanded from instruments into calculators, computers, and the printers that became its best-known consumer products. Through a long run of acquisitions and organic growth it became one of the world's largest technology companies, employing roughly 350,000 people at its 2011 peak. Its early management culture, known as "the HP Way," was widely studied and emulated.
In 2015 the company divided into two independent, publicly traded firms. The personal-computer and printer businesses continued as HP Inc., which retained the original stock history and NYSE listing, while the enterprise hardware, software, and services businesses were spun off as Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The Hewlett-Packard name, as a single company, ended with that split.