Even though you would never know by today's Hewlett Packard (HP), the company's roots are in electronics test equipment
(never thought I might have to explain that!). Most people who have been in the electronics realm are familiar with
the story of Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett starting their business in the 12'x18' single-car garage where Dave and
his wife lived at 367 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto, California. Bill, yet a bachelor, moved into the garage in 1938
(an early entrepreneurial engineer trend setter who literally lived in his office). Their first commercial product
was the Model 200A Audio Oscillator. Hewlett Packard went on to become the world's foremost maker of electronic test
equipment
Dave & Bill in "The Garage" with their Model 200A Audio Oscillator
(HP image)
for communications, medical, basic research, transportation, factory automation, and many other areas. HP set the
standard to which all other manufacturers aspired. Vintage HP test equipment is highly sought after by collectors
and hobbyists.
Hewlett Packard, which had gotten into the computer market, decided in 1999 to spin off the test and measurement
product division into a new company named Agilent. Longtime HP fans (including me) were sorely disappointed at the
news. Admittedly, Hewlett Packard had been losing market share to relative newcomers in the United States T&M
market like Rohde & Schwarz (R&S), so changing the name might have been a safe gamble. Commercial communications
test needs had been fostering a new genre of equipment like cellular system signal analyzers, complex function power
meters, 'smart" digital oscilloscopes, and more. Evidently the Agilent name didn't do the job of saving the product
line because now they have renamed yet again to
Keysight Technologies.
Oh yeah, that should do it.
Am I imagining it, or does there seem to be a trend that when a successful company's founders yield the reigns
of control either through acquisition or retirement, the culture changes almost overnight and things nearly always
get worse both for the workers who helped build the company and for the company image?
From the
Hewlett
Packard history website: "In September of 2004, HP announced efforts to preserve for future generations its most
famous piece of real estate - the HP garage. The project turned the clock back on the original house, shed and garage
at 367 Addison Avenue, Palo Alto, to conditions much as they were in 1939, when Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard established
the now legendary Hewlett-Packard partnership. Completion of the project was celebrated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony
on December 6, 2005. "
RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling
2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed
formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit
design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at
the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps
while tying up your telephone line, and a lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail"
when a new message arrived...
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