One of the founders of California's Silicon Valley, William (Bill) Hewlett, died on January 12th aged 87.
Bill Hewlett and David Packard started HewlettPackard - the order of the names was decided on the toss of a coin - in a garage in Palo Alto, California, close to Stanford University, in 1939. Their success in building one of America's 50 biggest corporations inspired later generations of entrepreneurs, and in 1989, the garage was made a state historic landmark. HP bought the house and garage for $1.7 million last year, and used it in its "Invent" marketing campaign.
The company also pioneered "the HP way" of "management by objectives". The concentration on personal responsibility and flexible working practices became a distinctive feature of Silicon Valley life.
When he retired in 1987, Bill Hewlett said: "I guess that's what I'm most proud of - the fact that we really created a way to work with employees, let them share in the profits and still keep control of it."
The profit-sharing schemes and company picnics may, however, have been less important than the close ties HP maintained with Stanford University. HP set up a co-operative programme that enabled employees to do advanced degrees at Stanford while on full pay, and this helped them recruit bright young graduates.
When the university created the Stanford Industrial Park in the early 1950s, on 579 acres next to the campus, HP was the second company to move in. The Stanford experiment helped generate the Silicon Valley phenomenon, and HP was just the first corporate giant spawned by the university.
When HP's success made them hugely wealthy, Bill Hewlett and David Packard led the way in charitable giving. With his first wife, Bill Hewlett set up the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in 1966 "to promote the well-being of mankind". It now has assets of $2 billion.
Bill Hewlett was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but grew up in California. He wanted to go to Stanford because it was where his father had taught medicine. He often said that if his father had not died when he was 12 he would have studied medicine, and joked that he chose electronics because he liked electric trains. Either way, it was at Stanford that he met Packard, and HP's first product - a cheap audio oscillator to test sound equipment - was based on research Bill Hewlett had done at Stanford.
An early customer was Bud Hawkins, the chief sound engineer from Walt Disney Studios, who was developing sound equipment for Fantasia, Disney's animated feature.
"In the beginning, we did anything to bring in a nickel," Bill Hewlett recalled in 1987. "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."
Later efforts included the first non-invasive foetal heart monitor for use during labour, and an ultrasound cardiac monitor fast enough to produce real-time moving images of a heart beating.
HP's core business was in test and measurement equipment: products such as signal generators, frequency counters and spectrum analysers that are unloved by everyone except the people who use them. The company became more widely known when it launched its first hand-held programmable calculator in 1972, and was turned into a household name by the success of the HP LaserJet printer, introduced in 1984.
HP's sales doubled from $6.5 billion in 1985 to $13.2 billion in 1990, then more than doubled to $31.5 billion in 1995. With the computer side of the business threatening to become overwhelming, the company's test and measurement arm was split off as Agilent Technologies.
The two companies, which started with $538 in capital, now have annual sales of almost $60 billion.
Bill Hewlett continued at HP for most of his life, becoming president (1964-'77) and chief executive officer (1969-'78). He retired in 1987, when he was named director emeritus. David Packard continued as chairman of the board of directors until 1993, and died in March 1996.
Bill Hewlett and David Packard not only worked together, they also played together. They took up cattle ranching in 1952. The friends had ranches in California and Idaho. Packard said: "By running the ranches together, as well as the company, Bill and I developed a unique understanding of each other. This harmony has served us well every single day in running HP."
Bill Hewlett is survived by his second wife, Rosemary, five children from his first marriage, and five stepchildren.
William Redington Hewlett: born 1913; died, January 2001
