engadget.com — The garage where budding entrepreneurs Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard set up shop nearly 70 years ago has now been designated a national historic landmark, according to the company that now bears the pair's initials. Widely considered to be the birth of SIlicon Valley, the garage (along with the rest of the property) was snapped up by HP in 2000
May 18, 2007 View in Crawl 4
swavalier711May 19, 2007
People seem to use garages a lot before they begin massively successful companies.(Starts hauling out computer equipment to garage)
aussienickussMay 19, 2007
Yeah....i'd like to see jobs/woz's garage. More interesting than HP's.
afterbrthtycoonMay 19, 2007
as someone who lives by it I can pretty much assure you there will be no large crowds storming the garage. It's not very accessible and the view you get is bad. Think of an old garage placed way in the back corner of a regular house's yard and a gate stopping you far from even the front of the house, let alone the garage. Still, Cool place to be if you are into that.
hardwareweenieMay 20, 2007
As a former HP employee, now part of Agilent, I was given an opportunity to visit the garage, and the adjoining house during the few days it was open to the "public" back a few years ago, just after the renovation. Agilent was spun off from HP back in 1999 as HP took the computing and imaging products, and their HUGE profits and left us with every thing else. I read the comments on the site linked above and there is a big fight over whether HP started Silicon Valley. One of the posters makes a good point that HP wasn't really in the business of making Silicon, it was in the business of making test equipment, and that Fairchild was the first to make silicon devices. The question is why make this garage a landmark?The real story behind the garage is that many of the things that Bill and Dave (Hewlett and Packard) came up with while forming their company came from their experiences in this little garage, There is a phrase we still use "The HP way" which comes from their experiences struggling to start their company. As with many successful businesses, it's not just the technology it's the business processes that are implemented. Once they were successful enough to hire employees, other than a spouse, they became increasingly concerned about doing things the right way, not just the bottom line. They eventually wrote out these fundamentals, of course, making a profit was key, but right behind that was being a good corporate and community citizen. The company called HP today, is just a shell of the original company started by Bill and Dave. In fact many people agree that Agilent carries the torch lit by these two, we still produce and sell Test and Measurement equipment and try our best to uphold the HP way.This landmark status is as much about recognizing Bill and Dave as admirable people for their technical and business prowess, as it is about the physical garage that started it all.
torontotedMay 21, 2007
This is great! The next time Costa Rican tourists visit the U.S they can see the birth place of their employer.Have you seen the employee compounds HP provides it's Costa Rican employees? Absolutely Gorgeous It looks like a resort!/HP is building massive data centers in Costa Rica.HP is a great company to work for especially if your living in Costa Rica. The average age of employees in CR is 25. They hire them straight out of high school.How do I know this... I used to work for HP and a friend of mine was training a Costa Rican to do his job. So he heard all kinds of stories. Hp also has an internal website that profiles its CR facilities and employees.I liked working for HP but the stress from hearing rumors of having my job outsourced was not worth it.Getting back to the facilities in Costa Rica, If you saw the building they work and live in you would not want to work for any other company. Absolutely stunning! If you live in Costa Rica apply to HP and visit the garage.If you work for HP, my prayers are with you as they are with my friends that still work there. I'm not trying to disparage HP just telling it like it is. They will eventually be a discount house for IT support.
svpirateMay 21, 2007
@stephend"not just some place where a popular company started"I dugg you up because I agree re: HP's starting Silicon Valley, but you are possibly forgetting Apple as good as started the Personal Computer revolution, which IMHO is the next great landmark after HP's. I think it makes sense to preserve both sites.