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63-502: The Network Computing System ( NCS ) was an implementation of the Network Computing Architecture (NCA). It was created at Apollo Computer in the 1980s. It comprised a set of tools for implementing distributed software applications, or distributed computing . The three principal components of NCS were a runtime environment for remote procedure calls, a network interface definition language (NIDL) compiler, and

126-749: A Fortune 500 ranking of 9 in 2009. In November 2009, HP announced its acquisition of 3Com , and closed the deal on April 12, 2010. On April 28, 2010, HP announced its buyout of Palm, Inc. for $ 1.2 billion. On September 2, 2010, HP won its bidding war for 3PAR with a $ 33 a share offer ($ 2.07 billion), which Dell declined to match. On November 1, 2015, Hewlett-Packard was split into two separate companies. Its enterprise products and services business were spun-off to form Hewlett Packard Enterprise , while its personal computer and printer businesses became HP Inc. Bill Hewlett and David Packard graduated with degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1935. The company started in

189-547: A garage in Palo Alto during a fellowship they had with past professor Frederick Terman at Stanford during the Great Depression , whom they considered a mentor in forming the company. In 1938, Packard and Hewlett began part-time work in a rented garage with an initial capital investment of US$ 538 (equivalent to $ 11,645 in 2023). In 1939, Hewlett and Packard decided to formalize their partnership. They tossed

252-643: A Fortune-20 company in the Dow Jones Industrial Average . Fiorina received a larger signing offer than any of her predecessors. The same year, Fiorina articulated a set of " rules of the garage ", an attempt to capture the spirit of the company's founders. In 1997, HP started selling its products in Iran through a European subsidiary and a Dubai -based Middle Eastern distributor, despite U.S. export sanctions prohibiting such deals imposed by Bill Clinton 's 1995 executive orders . The story

315-466: A coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard (HP) or Packard-Hewlett. Hewlett and Packard's first financially successful product was a precision audio oscillator known as the HP 200A , which used a small incandescent light bulb (known as a "pilot light") as a temperature dependent resistor in a critical portion of the circuit, and a negative feedback loop to stabilize

378-611: A definitive agreement to acquire Opsware in a cash tender deal that values the company at $ 14.25 per share, which combined Opsware software with the Oracle enterprise IT management software. In the first few years of Hurd's tenure as CEO, HP's stock price more than doubled. By the end of the 2007 fiscal year, HP reached the $ 100 billion mark for the first time. The company's annual revenue reached $ 104 billion , allowing HP to overtake competitor IBM. On May 13, 2008, HP and Electronic Data Systems (EDS) announced that they had signed

441-593: A definitive agreement under which HP would purchase EDS. On June 30, HP announced that the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 had expired. "The transaction still requires EDS stockholder approval and regulatory clearance from the European Commission and other non-U.S. jurisdictions and is subject to the satisfaction or waiver of the other closing conditions specified in

504-403: A degree of network transparency and low sysadmin -to-machine ratio. From 1980 to 1987, Apollo was the largest manufacturer of network workstations. Its quarterly sales exceeded $ 100 million for the first time in late 1986, and by the end of that year, it had the largest worldwide share of the engineering workstations market, at twice the market share of the number two, Sun Microsystems . At

567-546: A discount on HP workstations. Apollo was gradually closed down over the period of 1990–1997. This article was partly based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing and is used with permission under the GFDL . Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company , commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( / ˈ h juː l ɪ t ˈ p æ k ər d / HEW -lit PAK -ərd ) or HP ,

630-522: A foreign subsidiary. HP ended its relationship with Redington Gulf after the SEC inquiry. On September 3, 2001, HP announced that an agreement had been reached with Compaq to merge the two companies. On May 3, 2002, after passing a shareholder vote, HP officially announced the merger with Compaq. Prior to this, plans had been in place to consolidate the companies' product teams and product lines. The newly-merged company would officially launch five days after

693-427: A line of electronic test and measurement equipment. The HP Garage at 367 Addison Avenue is now designated an official California Historical Landmark, and is marked with a plaque calling it the "Birthplace of ' Silicon Valley ' ". The company won its first big contract in 1938 to provide the HP 200B , a variation of its first product, the HP 200A low-distortion frequency oscillator for Walt Disney 's production of

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756-503: A location broker service. The location broker differentiated NCS from similar offerings, such as the rival Open Network Computing technology from Sun Microsystems , by permitting services to be distributed in a dynamic fashion and offering the possibility of "location independence". The design and implementation of DCE/RPC , the remote procedure call mechanism in the Distributed Computing Environment ,

819-789: A manufacturing plant was established in Böblingen and a marketing organization in Geneva . Packard handed the presidency over to Hewlett when he became chairman in 1964, but remained CEO of the company. HP is recognized as the symbolic founder of Silicon Valley , though it did not actively investigate semiconductor devices until a few years after the " traitorous eight " abandoned William Shockley to create Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. Hewlett-Packard's HP Associates division, established around 1960, developed semiconductor devices primarily for internal use. Instruments and calculators were some of their products using semiconductor devices. During

882-543: A proprietary magnetic tape for storage. HP computers were similar in capabilities to the much later IBM Personal Computer , though the limitations of available technology forced prices to be high. In 1978, Hewlett stepped down as CEO and was succeeded by John A. Young . HP expanded into South Africa in the 1980s. Activists supporting divestment from South Africa accused HP of "automating apartheid ". Sales reached $ 6.5 billion in 1985 with 85,000 employees. In 1984, HP introduced both inkjet and laser printers for

945-532: A proprietary version of Pascal . The dual 68000 processor configuration was designed to provide automatic page fault switching, with the main processor executing the OS and program instructions, and the "fixer" processor satisfying the page faults. When a page fault was raised, the main CPU was halted in mid (memory) cycle while the fixer CPU would bring the page into memory and then allow the main CPU to continue, unaware of

1008-737: A range of printers and other imaging products. The company directly marketed its products to households; small- to medium-sized businesses and enterprises, as well as via online distribution; consumer-electronics and office-supply retailers; software partners; and major technology vendors. It also offered services and a consulting business for its products and partner products. In 1999, HP spun off its electronic and bio-analytical test and measurement instruments business into Agilent Technologies ; HP retained focus on its later products, including computers and printers. It merged with Compaq in 2002, and acquired Electronic Data Systems in 2008, which led to combined revenues of $ 118.4 billion that year and

1071-546: A reputation for sturdiness and usability. HP introduced the Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus (HPIB) computer peripheral interface (later cloned by National Instruments as GPIB and standardized by the IEEE as IEEE-488 ) on their relay actuator products in 1973. HPIB was later integrated into most high end test & measurement equipment it produced from 1980 onward. As early as 1977, HP began production of

1134-467: A simple accumulator -based design with two accumulator registers and, in the HP 1000 models, two index registers . The series was produced for 20 years in spite of several attempts to replace it, and was a forerunner of the HP 9800 and HP 250 series of desktop and business computers. At the end of 1968, Packard handed over the duties of CEO to Hewlett to become United States Deputy Secretary of Defense in

1197-553: A system that was larger and significantly slower than the previous ones. In the end, Hewlett Packard shut down the Domain/OS line. Release 10 came out as competitors were gaining ground in the area of graphics and windowing systems, particularly with the trend to open systems and the X Window System . Another feature was its proprietary token ring network, which was originally designed to support relatively small networks of, at most, dozens of computers in an office environment. It

1260-567: A workstation, and software to manage them—OpenView Client Configuration Manager 2.0. In that same year, HP's share price skyrocketed due to consistent results in the last couple quarters of the year with Hurd's plan to cut back HP's workforce and lower costs. HP began its marketing campaign called "The Computer is Personal Again" in May 2006, aimed at bringing back the personal computer as a personal product. The campaign utilized viral marketing and sophisticated visuals, as well as its own website. Some of

1323-645: Is based on NCA/NCS. In response to a request for proposals from the Open Software Foundation for distributed computing environments, NCS featured in the DEcorum proposal submitted by Apollo, by then incorporated as a division within Hewlett-Packard , along with IBM , Locus Computing , Transarc , Digital Equipment Corporation and Microsoft . It also was the first implementation of universally unique identifiers , these being employed by

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1386-479: The Apple I computer while working at HP and offered it to them under their right of first refusal to his work. They did not take it up as the company wanted to stay in scientific, business, and industrial markets. Wozniak said that HP "turned him down five times", but that his loyalty to HP made him hesitant to start Apple with Steve Jobs . The company earned global respect for a variety of products. They introduced

1449-539: The HP Pavilion dv1000 series of laptops in 2004, which included the HP Pavilion dv1658 and dv1040 models. Other laptop models available around this time were the dv4000, dv5000, and the dv8000 series. In January 2005, following years of underperformance, which included HP's Compaq merger that fell short and disappointing earning reports, the board asked Fiorina to resign as chair and chief executive officer of

1512-727: The 1940 animated film Fantasia , which allowed Hewlett and Packard to formally establish the Hewlett-Packard Company on July 2, 1939. The company grew into a multinational corporation widely respected for its products. HP was the world's leading PC manufacturer from 2007 until the second quarter of 2013, when Lenovo moved ahead of HP. HP specialized in developing and manufacturing computing, data storage, and networking hardware; designing software; and delivering services. Major product lines included personal computing devices, enterprise and industry standard servers, related storage devices, networking products, software, and

1575-469: The 1960s, HP partnered with Sony and Yokogawa Electric in Japan to develop several high-quality products. The products were not a huge success, as there were high costs involved in building HP-looking products in Japan. In 1963, HP and Yokogawa formed the joint venture Yokogawa-Hewlett-Packard to market HP products in Japan. HP bought Yokogawa Electric's share of Hewlett-Packard Japan in 1999. HP spun off

1638-540: The HP856x spectrum analyzers to complement its RF power meters and sensors capable of measuring signals in excess of 20 GHz. HP also produced configurable chassis based sweep generators capable of generating signals to 20 GHz. Other T&M products of the time included lab grade multimeters, microwave frequency counters, RF amplifiers, high accuracy microwave detectors, lab grade power supplies and more. These products were succeeded by modernized versions as well as

1701-617: The Model 400A vacuum-tube voltmeter during the war. Hewlett and Packard worked on counter-radar technology and artillery shell proximity fuzes during World War II; the work exempted Packard from the draft, but Hewlett had to serve as an officer in the Army Signal Corps after being called to active duty. HP was incorporated on August 18, 1947, with Packard as president. Sales reached $ 5.5 million in 1951 with 215 employees. The company went public on November 6, 1957. In 1959,

1764-588: The Year" in 2003, which in turn published a press release stating that "[t]he seeds of the Redington-Hewlett-Packard relationship were sowed six years ago for one market — Iran." At the time, Redington Gulf had only three employees whose sole purpose was to sell HP products to the Iran market. According to former officials who worked on sanctions, HP used a loophole by routing their sales through

1827-486: The ads featured Pharrell , Petra Nemcova , Mark Burnett , Mark Cuban , Alicia Keys , Jay-Z , Gwen Stefani , and Shaun White . This marketing campaign was also incorporated directly onto HP's product offerings, which included desktops, laptops, and other hardware and software. HP offered three new laptop models in mid-to-late 2006 with the Pavilion dv2000 , dv6000 , and dv9000 series. In July 2007, HP signed

1890-497: The amplitude of the output sinusoidal waveform. This allowed the HP 200A to be sold for $ 89.40 when competitors were selling less stable oscillators for over $ 200 . The 200 series of generators continued production until at least 1972 as the 200AB, still tube-based but improved in design through the years. One of the company's earliest customers was Bud Hawkins, chief sound engineer for Walt Disney Studios , who bought eight HP 200B audio oscillators (at $ 71.50 each) to be used in

1953-472: The animated film Fantasia . HP's profit at the end of 1939, its first full year of business, was $ 1,563 (equivalent to $ 34,236 in 2023) on revenues of $ 5,369 . In 1942, they built their first building at 395 Page Mill Road and were awarded the Army-Navy "E" Award in 1943. HP employed 200 people and produced the audio oscillator, a wave analyzer, distortion analyzers, an audio-signal generator, and

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2016-577: The announcement on May 7, 2002. As Compaq acquired Tandem Computers in 1997 and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1998, HP inherited both acquired companies' product lines, and offered support for the Tandem NonStop family (now owned by Hewlett Packard Enterprise) and DEC products PDP-11 , VAX and Alpha . Both the DEC PDP-11 and VAX were discontinued years before the merger, and HP supported DEC Alpha until April 2007. The merger

2079-514: The company, and she did on February 9, 2005. After her departure, HP's stock jumped 6.9 percent. Robert Wayman, chief financial officer of HP, served as interim CEO while the board undertook a formal search for a replacement. Mark Hurd of NCR Corporation was hired to take over as CEO and president, effective April 1, 2005. Hurd was the board's top choice given the revival of NCR that took place under his leadership. In 2006, HP unveiled several new products including desktops, enhanced notebooks,

2142-477: The decade, HP opened hpshopping.com as an independent subsidiary to sell online, direct to consumers; in 2005, the store was renamed "HP Home & Home Office Store". From 1995 to 1999, Hewlett-Packard were sponsors of the English football team Tottenham Hotspur . In 1999, all of the businesses not related to computers, storage, and imaging were spun off from HP to form Agilent Technologies . Agilent's spin-off

2205-404: The desktop. Along with its scanner product line, the printers have later been developed into successful multifunction products, the most significant being single-unit printer/scanner/copier/fax machines. The print mechanisms in HP's LaserJet line of laser printers depend almost entirely on Canon Inc. 's components (print engines), which in turn use technology developed by Xerox . HP developed

2268-413: The end of 1987, it was third in market share after Digital Equipment Corporation and Sun, but ahead of Hewlett-Packard and IBM . Apollo's largest customers were Mentor Graphics (electronic design), General Motors , Ford , Chrysler , Chicago Research and Trading (Options and Futures) and Boeing . Apollo was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 1989 for US$ 476 million, and gradually closed down over

2331-436: The first bit mapped graphics displays that, when combined with the HP 2100 21MX F-Series microcoded Scientific Instruction Set, enabled the first commercial WYSIWYG presentation program , BRUNO , that later became the program HP-Draw on the HP 3000. Although scoffed at in the formative days of computing, HP surpassed IBM as the world's largest technology vendor in terms of sales. HP was identified by Wired magazine as

2394-664: The hardware, firmware, and software to convert data into dots for printing. On March 3, 1986, HP registered the HP.com domain name, making it the ninth Internet .com domain to be registered. In 1987, the Palo Alto garage where Hewlett and Packard started their business was designated as a California Historical Landmark . In the 1990s, HP expanded their computer product line, which initially had been targeted at university, research, and business users, to reach consumers. HP also grew through acquisitions: it bought Apollo Computer in 1989 and Convex Computer in 1995. In 1992, Young

2457-546: The incoming Nixon administration. He resumed the chairmanship in 1972 and served until 1993, but Hewlett remained the CEO. The HP 3000 was an advanced stack-based design for a business computing server, later redesigned with RISC technology. The HP 2640 series of smart and intelligent terminals introduced forms-based interfaces to ASCII terminals, and also introduced screen labeled function keys , now commonly used on gas pumps and bank ATMs. The HP 2640 series included one of

2520-471: The introduction of the scalar and vector network analyzer product lines prior to the business being spun off into Agilent Technologies . The HP 9800 series of technical desktop computers started in 1971 with the 9810A. The HP Series 80 started in 1979 with the 85. Some of these machines used a version of the BASIC programming language , which was available immediately after they were switched on, and used

2583-482: The location broker to identify objects in the distributed system. This programming-language -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Apollo Computer Apollo was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 1989 for US$ 476 million (equivalent to $ 1170 million in 2023), and gradually closed down over the period of 1990–1997. The brand (as "HP Apollo") was resurrected in 2014 as part of HP's high-performance computing portfolio. Apollo

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2646-457: The merger agreement." The agreement was finalized on August 26, 2008, at $ 13 billion, and it was publicly announced that EDS would be re-branded. The first targeted layoff of 24,600 former EDS workers was announced on September 15, 2008. (The company's 2008 annual report gave the number as 24,700, to be completed by end of 2009. ) This round was factored into purchase price as a $ 19.5 billion liability against goodwill. As of September 23, 2009, EDS

2709-457: The page fault. Later improvements in the Motorola 68010 processor obviated the need for the dual-processor design. Certain efficiencies were gained by careful design; for example, the memory page size, network packet , and disk sector were all 1K byte in size. With this arrangement, a page fault could take place across the network as well as on the individual computer and Aegis file system

2772-563: The period 1990-1997. But after acquiring Apollo Computer in 1989, HP integrated a lot of Apollo technology into their own HP 9000 series of workstations and servers. The Apollo engineering center took over PA-RISC workstation development and Apollo became an HP workstation brand name ( HP Apollo 9000 ) for a while. Apollo also invented the revision control system DSEE ( Domain Software Engineering Environment) which inspired IBM IBM DevOps Code ClearCase . DSEE

2835-424: The producer of the world's first device to be called a personal computer: the Hewlett-Packard 9100A , introduced in 1968. HP called it a desktop calculator because, as Hewlett said: "If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our customers' computer gurus because it didn't look like an IBM . We therefore decided to call it a calculator, and all such nonsense disappeared." An engineering triumph at

2898-468: The significance of the alliance and also key letters from the two companies H ewlett- P ackard and Compa q (the latter company being famous for incorporating the letter "Q" on its logo for all of their products). HP then went on to become a major producer in desktop computers , laptops, and servers for many different markets. Mscape was a mobile media gaming platform that could be used to create location-based games originating in 2002. HP released

2961-566: The small company Dynac to specialize in digital equipment. The name was picked so that the HP logo could be turned upside down to be a reflected image of the logo of the new company. Dynac was eventually renamed Dymec and folded back into HP in 1959. HP experimented with using Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) minicomputers with its instruments, but entered the computer market in 1966 with the HP 2100 / HP 1000 series of minicomputers after it decided that it would be easier to build another small design team than deal with DEC. The minicomputers had

3024-440: The time, the logic circuit was produced without any integrated circuits , and the CPU assembly was entirely executed in discrete components. With CRT display, magnetic-card storage, and printer, the price was around $ 5,000. The machine's keyboard was a cross between the keyboard of a scientific calculator and the keyboard of an adding machine. There was no alphabetic keyboard. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak originally designed

3087-609: The world's first handheld scientific electronic calculator in 1972 (the HP-35 ), the first handheld programmable in 1974 (the HP-65 ), the first alphanumeric, programmable, expandable in 1979 (the HP-41 C), and the first symbolic and graphing calculator, the HP-28C . Like their scientific and business calculators, HP oscilloscopes , logic analyzers , and other measurement instruments had

3150-435: Was a single system of memory mapped files across the entire network. The namespace of the network was self discovering as new nodes (workstations) were added. Domain/OS (Distributed On-line Multi-access Interactive Network/Operating System) was initially a layer over Aegis and was not built on a Unix kernel . Release 10 incorporated large parts of Unix but the burden of backwards compatibility with previous releases led to

3213-461: Was a superb design, allowing direct memory access page faulting from any hard drive on the network, but it did not inter-operate with any other existing network hardware or software. The industry widely adopted Ethernet and TCP/IP , a more universal, albeit much slower network. Apollo later added support for these industry standards while continuing to support its own Domain networking using both Ethernet and token ring. The Domain network routing

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3276-489: Was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California . HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components, as well as software and related services to consumers, small and medium-sized businesses ( SMBs ), and fairly large companies, including customers in government, health, and education sectors. The company was founded in a one-car garage in Palo Alto by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939, and initially produced

3339-477: Was fragmented for the first few years, but was reorganized in late 1992, at which point there were still some 100,000 users of Apollo products and the user group IWorks (formerly InterWorks) had some 4,500 members. Earlier that year, Sun had already offered discounts on its systems for customers trading in their Apollo machines; HP responded the next winter with a trade-in program of its own, that also allowed trading in hardware from Sun and other vendors in return for

3402-428: Was hired as President and CEO in 1984, and founder William Poduska left the company in 1985 to found Stellar . The company incurred large losses in 1987 in currency speculation due to the trading activities of one individual, and in 1988 from declining demand for its products. In 1989, Apollo was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for US$ 476 million (equivalent to $ 1170 million in 2023). HP support for Apollo products

3465-484: Was initially reported by The Boston Globe , and it triggered an inquiry by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). HP responded that products worth US$ 120 million were sold in fiscal year 2008 for distribution via Redington Gulf, a company based in the Netherlands, and that as these sales took place through a foreign subsidiary, HP had not violated sanctions. HP named Redington Gulf "Wholesaler of

3528-441: Was known as HP Enterprise Services (now known as DXC Technology ). On November 11, 2009, 3Com and Hewlett-Packard announced that the latter would be acquiring 3Com for $ 2.7 billion in cash. The acquisition was one of the biggest in size among a series of takeovers and acquisitions by technology giants to push their way to become one-stop shops. Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007, tech giants have constantly felt

3591-569: Was modeled after Xerox Network Systems . The company moved from a proprietary data bus architecture in favor of IBM's AT-bus , as used in the second generation of IBM PCs, and was simultaneously embracing RISC technology moving towards high-end processors, eventually producing the PRISM line. The workstation industry in general experienced hard times in the second half of the 1980s, as IBM Personal Computers and IBM PC compatibles began making inroads on their customer base. Thomas Vanderslice

3654-424: Was preceded by a proxy fight in 2001 with numerous large HP shareholders as well as the sons of the co-founders, with Bill Hewlett's son Walter objecting to the merger, only approving it reluctantly. HP's pre-merger ticker symbol was "HWP". After the merger with Compaq, the new ticker symbol became "HPQ", which was announced on May 6, 2002. "HPQ" is a combination of the two previous symbols, "HWP" and "CPQ", to show

3717-467: Was pronounced "dizzy". Apollo machines used a proprietary operating system, Aegis, because of the excessive cost of single-CPU Unix licenses at the time of system definition. Aegis, like Unix , was based on concepts from the Multics time-sharing operating system. It used the concepts of shell programming (à la Stephen Bourne ), single-level store , and object-oriented design . Aegis was written in

3780-409: Was started in 1980, two years before rival Sun Microsystems . In addition to Poduska, the founders included Dave Nelson (Engineering), Mike Greata (Engineering), Charlie Spector (COO), Bob Antonuccio (Manufacturing), Gerry Stanley (Sales and Marketing), and Dave Lubrano (Finance). The founding engineering team included Mike Sporer, Bernie Stumpf, Russ Barbour, Paul Leach, and Andy Marcuvitz. Apollo

3843-406: Was succeeded by Lewis E. Platt , and in 1993 and Hewlett and Packard stepped down from the board with Platt succeeding Packard as chairman. In 1993, HP acquired Advanced Design System from Pathwave. The ADS suite of RF simulation tools was spun off into Agilent in 1999 along with related T&M business units, all of which were carried forward into the spinoff of Agilent into Keysight. Later in

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3906-461: Was the first to release a standalone workstation . In 1981, the company unveiled the DN100 workstation, which used the Motorola 68000 microprocessor . Apollo workstations ran Aegis (later replaced by Domain/OS ), a proprietary operating system with a Unix alternative shell . Apollo's networking was particularly elegant, among the first to allow demand paging over the network, and allowing

3969-410: Was the largest initial public offering in the history of Silicon Valley , and it created an $ 8 billion company with about 30,000 employees, manufacturing scientific instruments , semiconductors , optical networking devices, and electronic test equipment for telecom and wireless, research and development , and production. In July 1999, HP appointed Carly Fiorina as the first female CEO of

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