December 4, 2005

A Garage Renovation

High geekdom here... From BoingBoing:
Hewlett Packard Garage Birthplace Restored
Snip from Damon Darlin's story in the NYT:

Million-dollar renovations of multimillion-dollar homes are not uncommon along this university town's tree-lined streets. But spending that kind of money to fix up a garage? And a 12-by-18-foot, wood-frame, one-car garage at that?

When the garage in question is one of the most famous in the business world, that kind of investment may not be so odd. The little brown building with green doors at 367 Addison Avenue is often considered the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

David Packard and William R. Hewlett set up shop there in 1938, cutting a template that thousands of fresh-faced entrepreneurs, just out of school, would use in hopes of building products and companies that could change the world - and make them rich.
hp-garage-01.jpg hp-garage-02.jpg
They started out making simple test equipment that was rock solid and accurate. Their calculators were legendary -- I still have mine. They have grown quite a bit but the quality of their test equipment is still at the top of the heap. Consumer equipment isn't as good but they are forced into compromise by the basic economics of the market niche. Posted by DaveH at December 4, 2005 10:06 PM
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