Hewlett-Packard: A brief history of the Silicon Valley pioneer (1938-2015)

 

1938: Stanford University graduates Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, with $538 in working capital begin working on an audio oscillator in a Palo Alto garage at 367 Addison Avenue. The Walt Disney Co. buys eight of the devices for its acclaimed cartoon "Fantasia."
1939: The two founders formalize their partnership and flip a coin to decide on the name Hewlett-Packard.
1957: HP becomes publicly traded on the stock market.
1972: Launch of the HP-35, the first pocket scientific calculator. It is used aboard NASA spaceships and was named by Forbes ASAP as one of the 20 "all-time products" that changed the world.
1978: Bill Hewlett steps down as chief executive.
1980: HP launches its first personal computer, the HP-85, followed by its touchscreen computer the HP-150, in 1983, and its "portable" HP-110 in 1984.
1984: The HP LaserJet, the first laser printer for PCs, is launched and quickly becomes a star product.
1993: Dave Packard leaves as chairman of the board.
1999: Carly Fiorina is named CEO, becoming the first woman to head a Fortune 50 company. Its life sciences and instrument unit is spun off as Agilent Technologies in the largest Silicon Valley stock offering of the time.
Fight on Compaq
2002: HP becomes the world's largest PC maker after swallowing rival Compaq for $20 billion in a deal that Fiorina pushed through in a contested boardroom battle over the objections of scion Walter Hewlett.
2005: Fiorina is fired after the board views the Compaq deal as a mistake.
2008: Under CEO Mark Hurd, the company moves into services with a $13 billion deal for Electronic Data System. The deal is followed by 25,000 job cuts and HP's writedown in 2012 indicates it overpaid for EDS.
2010: Hurd steps down amid accusations of sexual harassment.
2011: CEO Leo Apotheker decides to get rid of the PC business. But he is fired before carrying out the plan, and his replacement, former eBay chief Meg Whitman, reverses course. But the company completes Apotheker's $10 billion acquisition of British software group Autonomy, a deal clouded by lawsuits and allegations of accounting irregularities at Autonomy.
2012: Whitman launches a major reorganization that eventually leads to 55,000 job cuts.
2013: HP is overtaken in the PC market by China's Lenovo, following its acquisition of the personal computer unit of IBM.
2014: HP unveils plans to split into separate companies, one for software and services, the other for printers and PCs.
2015: Ahead of the November 1 split, HP says the split will lead of another 30,000 job reductions