From the HP Archives…

Quote of the Week….

ammancini — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:06:00 GMT

“I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind..."
Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)

Many folks attribute this quote to Dave Packard or Bill Hewlett. In fact, it was from neither of them, but obviously, they approved of it. It appeared in the early issues (1960s) of HP's employee magazine at the bottom of the contents page.

Quote of the Day: Herding Cattle

ammancini — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:04:00 GMT

Over the weekend, I read the Time magazine cover story on Nelson Mandela, which outlined Mandela’s eight rules of leadership. I was struck by how similar one of them was to something Dave Packard had written in his book (The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company).

Mandela’s third lesson was “Lead from the back—and let others believe they are in front.” The author explained that “Mandela loved to reminisce about his boyhood and his lazy afternoons herding cattle. ‘You know,’ he would say,’you could only lead them from behind.’ ”

Likewise, in his book, Packard discusses the pleasures of being a rancher. (He and Bill owned the San Felipe Ranch and ran a cattle operation there.)

“I have enjoyed many pleasures as the result of my experiences as a rancher; I’ve also learned a thing or two. Every season we would round up the cattle from the range and drive them to the corral. Along the way, we’d come to a gate; the trick was to get them through the gate and not stampede them. I found, after much trial and error, that applying steady gentle pressure from the rear worked best. Eventually, one would decide to go through the gate; the rest would soon follow. Press them too hard, and they’d panic, scattering in all directions. Slack off entirely, and they’d just head back to their old grazing spots. This insight was useful throughout my management career.”

I guess great leaders think alike.

More on Bill's visit to HP during WWII...

ammancini — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:14:00 GMT

On the same April 1944 visit to HP, Bill reported to the folks at HP on how the equipment they were manufacturing was holding up and contributing to the war effort. Hewlett had just returned from a trip to the South Pacific, where he had been ordered to evaluate the performance of Signal Corps equipment and report on any difficulties traceable to defective electronic instrumentation.

"Up at Munda," Bill said, “I found one [HP] 205A which had fallen into the ocean. Upon rescue, it was dried out and the condenser changed, whereupon it functioned perfectly. Apparently the glyptol which HP applies is an insulating factor and a very good one at that, as otherwise the many fine wires in the attenuator would have corroded beyond repair.

“The men in this area have so little, that even the simplest repair parts are lacking. It takes from 90 to 100 days to obtain material from the States into the South Pacific area. So everything we send them is most fully appreciated. We have even received letters requesting us to bore holes in the bottoms of chassis so that water, collecting through condensation during the humid night, might escape. Here the humidity is such that some of America’s best instruments, instruments that perform splendidly in the U.S., will stop functioning in one hour under jungle conditions. Therefore, it is imperative that our test equipment be of the very best that we can possibly make.

“Our equipment is and will be subject to very harsh treatment. It is often dumped out from large cargo nets along with much heavier pieces of material. Much of it is literally floated ashore in rubber bags; hence, the need for such unusual care in waxing the cartons for overseas shipment. Our equipment follows the assault wave very closely, and is therefore right in the thick of the fight, actually being of a direct benefit to our boys in the very midst of battle.

“At Guadalcanal, Munda, Hawaii, and elsewhere, our equipment was well liked. We are building up a good reputation. These Signal Corps men are coming back, and they will want HP instruments -- instruments that they can rely upon. So we have a reputation to uphold. We, therefore, must produce even better units so that our equipment will stand up under the most impossible of climatic and otherwise harsh conditions."

Here's another photo from that trip, with Bill and the women on the manufacturing line. By now they would be located at 395 Page Mill Rd. in Palo Alto.

Bill Hewlett in WWII

ammancini — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:25:00 GMT

I have been asked many times whether Bill or Dave served in WWII.

Indeed, in 1942 Bill was called to active duty in the Army (he was in the Army Reserve) and was assigned to the Technical Division of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer in Washington, D.C., where he remained for the next three years. He was then transferred to the New Development Division of the War Department’s Special Staff, where he served as the head of the Electronics Section.

In 1945, he was a member of the Compton Mission, which was sent to Japan immediately after surrender to form a quick appraisal of the Japanese scientific war effort. In December of that year, he returned to Hewlett-Packard Company.

Bill did manage to get away a few times to go back and visit the HP plant in Palo Alto. Below is a photo of him doing just that in 1944. Note that Captain Hewlett is in uniform.

More on the "E" for excellence award....

ammancini — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:50:00 GMT

Here's more on the "E" award, as explained in “Watt’s Current,” HP’s newsletter of the time . . .

In 1906 the Navy instituted in the Fleet an award for excellence which has been known ever since as the Navy “E”. First awarded for excellence in gunnery, this was later extended to include outstanding performance in engineering and communications. An honor not easily won or lightly bestowed, because it has remained a matter of deep pride to the men of the Service who received it. [Note: HP's award was given to "you men and women of HP."]

When the rising tide of war in Europe placed a premium on the production of war equipment, the Navy “E” award was extended to embrace those plants and organizations which showed excellence in producing ships, weapons and equipment for the Navy.

Then came Pearl Harbor – and with it a demand for war production such as the world has never known . . . an awareness that our fighting forces and the men and women of American industry are partners in the great struggle for human freedom . . . and on the part of all Americans a grim and enduring resolve to work and fight together until victory in that struggle is final and complete.

From that high resolve was born the Army-Navy Production Award--which stands today as our fighting forces' joint recognition of exceptional performance on the production front . . . of the determined, persevering, unbeatable American spirit which can be satisfied only by achieving today what yesterday seemed impossible.

This award consists of a flag to be flown about your plant and a pin, which every individual in your plant may wear as a symbol of outstanding contribution to the war effort. Plants which surpass or maintain their high production record for six moths after receiving the original Award will qualify for a white Service Star for their Award flag. Other Service Stars may be won for continued high production for succeeding six-month periods. High quality and quantity of production in the light of available facilities are prime factors in selecting recipients. The Board also considers: (1) Overcoming of production obstacles (2) Avoidance of stoppages (3) Maintenance of fair labor standards (4) Training of additional labor forces (5) Effective management (6) Record on accidents, health, sanitation, and plant protection (7) Utilization of subcontracting facilities (8) Conservation of critical and stragic materials (10[sic]) and low rate of absenteeism.

It is notable that our plant was one of three in California to be given this award. HP Co. has jointed the 2 1/2 % of all manufacturers in the United States to have this honor conferred upon them. Altogether 29 awards were presented to companies in the U.S. for the last six months. HP is the only small electronic industry in this locality to have an “E”. Entering this field so recently, it is all the more creditable. This should be an added incentive to work harder and keep the stars coming every six months.

No "E" award was permanent. The records of each company were reviewed every six months by both the Army and Navy boards for production awards. If the boards found that a company had not succeeded in upholding the standards of the Army-Navy Production Award, the award was withdrawn.

For each six month period that the award was renewed, a white service star was added to the "E" flag. HP received three stars altogether, the last being awarded in May, 1945.

HP in WWII

ammancini — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:52:00 GMT

In the spirit of the 4^th of July, I thought I would write about E-awards. Not the eAwards that HP employees can earn today as bonuses, but the Army-Navy E-Award of World War II.

This was an award for excellence in production, and Hewlett-Packard Company was the proud recipient of four of them. HP received its first “E” in 1943. On November 20^th of that year, on a Saturday afternoon at 4:00, the award ceremony was held at the Mayfield School auditorium. (Mayfield was later incorporated into Palo Alto.)

The award was in the form of a small flag, referred to as a burgee. Below is a photo of the ceremony, with Dave Packard (center stage) accepting the award from Captain Alva B. Court on behalf of the Navy. For those of you who are local to the Bay Area, the master of ceremonies was Joseph F. Donovan, public relations director of the Joshua Hendy Iron Works in Sunnyvale.

As part of the award, all employees received a token pin. Accepting the pins were employee representatives Al Spear, Dick Arms, Tom Deaver and Zera Moody, seated left rear on the stage in the photo.

(If you’re wondering where Bill Hewlett was, he was serving in the army. Packard ran the company while Hewlett was away, although Hewlett checked in when he could.)

You can see the “E” flag flying over HP’s first building in this photo.

A quote from Bill

ammancini — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 05:25:00 GMT

Bill Hewlett did not give as many speeches as did Dave Packard. His long-time secretary told me he did not enjoy speaking, but he did write his own speeches, and worked very hard on them.

So there are not as many quotes from him as there are from Dave Packard, which makes the selection of a Hewlett quote a bit more difficult. However, I like this straightforward one:

“You simply cannot run an operation and assume that everything is perfect.”

He was talking about the need to get feedback from employees, and discussed various ways that HP did that. But I think it could be applied to almost anything in management.

The quote is from a speech entitled “The Human Side of Management,” given at the University of Notre Dame's Eugene B. Clark Executive Lecture Series in 1982.

A Young Bill Hewlett

ammancini — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:07:00 GMT

It’s Photo Day, this being Friday, and this month I will feature Bill Hewlett.

This may be the earliest photo we have of Bill in the HP Archives. He is pictured rappelling on Mt. Owen, California, in 1930, the year he entered Stanford University.

Bill was an outdoor enthusiast—he grew up spending summers in the Sierras, and enjoyed camping, mountain climbing, fishing, and skiing. Later in life, he became an accomplished wildflower photographer.

It was their mutual love of the outdoors that brought Bill and Dave Packard together as friends, and then partners.

Quote from Bill Hewlett on creativity...

ammancini — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:51:00 GMT

Hello, I’m sorry I’ve been gone for a while; HP moved to a new blogging platform, but I am back up now. Since I wrote about David and Lucile Packard last month, this month I will concentrate on Bill Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard Company.

To start the week off with a quote from Bill, I’m going with my favorite:

“It is very difficult to spot a creative individual just by looking at a resume.”

Bill was an expert in creativity, being a creative genius himself. He had a knack for encouraging it in others; I suspect that was because he knew, consciously or unconsciously, how to nurture it in himself. The rest of his speech demonstrates this:

“Successful innovators share many common traits. Creative people have an abiding curiosity and an insatiable desire to learn how and why things work. They take nothing for granted. They are interested in things around them, and tend to stow away bits and pieces of information in their minds for future use. And, they have a great ability to mobilize their thinking and experiences for use in solving a new problem.”

He could not have described himself better.

Dave Packard Quote

warrensander — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:35:00 GMT

Monday is “Quote Day” in the HP Archives, and since we’ve been talking about Dave and Lucile and their contributions, I thought I would start with a quote from Dave Packard about contribution. In 1960 he addressed an HP management training session and started his talk with the following:

“I want to discuss why a company exists in the first place….I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an improtant result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper to find our real reason for being….A group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company…to do something worthwhile—they make a contribution to society….The real reason for our existence is that we provide something which is unique.”

Two movies on the Packards

Anna Mancini HP Corporate Archivist — Thu, 15 May 2008 23:44:00 GMT

I’ve referred several times to “Valued Partners,” the current exhibit at the Los Altos History Museum. The exhibit is a real eye-opener about the contributions David and Lucile Packard made to the community separately and together.

The next program in the museum’s series will be held May 28. Two very good documentaries (both of which I have seen) are showing: “Memories of Lu and Dave” and “Woman of Grace.” In both movies, friends and family of the Packards recollect and share their memories of these two remarkable people, who thought themselves anything but remarkable. Details about the program can be found here.

Packard as a "ham"

warrensander — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:33:00 GMT

Well, it happened again. Today someone dropped by the archives, and I got distracted by something totally interesting.

Turns out my visitor is a “ham”—a ham radio operator. He asked me if I knew Dave Packard’s ham radio call number. Dave was a ham, as were many of the early engineers at HP. According to his book, The HP Way, Dave’s call number, which he got as a teenager in Colorado, was 9DRV.

Only one problem, said my visitor—that number makes no sense. According to him, there should be a letter in front of it.

When one radio operator would contact another, they would send a postcard as a follow-up. I happen to have a collection of ham postcards from the 1930s in the archives.

Although I don’t have any postcards from Colorado, I have them from many other states, and all of their call numbers start with a “W.” The postcards from other countries all start with different letters.

I have one card from Missouri that starts with a “9.” Perhaps it was a convention to assume the “W” for the U.S. call numbers. Therefore, I think it’s safe to say that Dave’s call number was W9DRV. Any hams out there want to comment?

Why am I interested in ham radio? Well, note this 1939 photo of the HP garage. See the pole on top?

I never could figure out what it was. In fact, I thought it was a clothesline, because now there is an old clothesline reel attached to it. However, when we were doing the garage restoration in 2005, the construction crew told me they found antennae wire running from the pole down into the garage through the back window. It’s possible that Dave was pursuing his ham radio hobby in the garage at 367 Addison Avenue.

Here are photos of some of the cards in the HP Archives collection.

HP listed on NYSE in 1961

warrensander — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:51:00 GMT

As mentioned in my last blog, last week I attended a program called “The HP Phenomenon,” sponsored by the Los Altos History Museum. It featured a panel of gentlemen who had worked for HP as contemporaries and friends of Dave Packard, and basically, they spent the evening telling stories about Packard. There was a lot of laughter that night.

I had heard many of the stories, and I learned some new ones. One of my favorites was Dave Kirby’s account of HP’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 1961. (Packard hired Kirby in 1962 to start a public relations department at HP. Before that, HP had been using a public relations agency, and Kirby was working on the HP account.)

Here, essentially, is the story Dave Kirby told, condensed from an old interview we have in the HP Archives.

“HP went on the exchange in '61 while I was still at the agency. It was considered enough of an event that I went to New York to be there for it.

Something funny happened in connection with HP going on the exchange. When a company goes on the exchange, at the opening bell—which in those days was probably ten o'clock in the morning—it is announced that the ABC company is coming on the exchange, and the first sale of the day is in the stock of that company, and it's shown up on the board. The principals of the company are actually down on the trading floor.

Hewlett-Packard people were going to go down to the exchange and participate in this event. Several of us had breakfast at the Essex House up by Central Park. Packard, Noel Eldred, Ed Van Bronkhorst, Hewlett, Barney Oliver and I were at breakfast, after which we left the hotel and Dave Packard said, ‘Why don't we take the subway downtown? It might be fun,’ and he started off down the street to the subway entrance. He takes long strides, and we were all running after him.

We got on the subway, but to get to the stock exchange, a transfer was necessary. A discussion ensued about where to get off and where to transfer, and there was a disagreement about it. At some point, we transferred and got on another subway. Shortly thereafter, we realized that wasn't the best route, so we got off the subway about four blocks from the Exchange. Packard by this time was running and we were all trailing behind.

We had a 9:00 meeting scheduled with Keith Funston, president of the New York Stock Exchange, to chat about the company. He was going to bring some people in for us to meet.

Well, we didn't get there until 9:15, and Dave Packard likes to be punctual! We were escorted upstairs into Keith Funston's huge office, which had thick carpet and portraits around the walls. He got up from his desk—he knew Packard—and Packard shook his hand and said, ‘Keith, I'm sorry we're late. We got lost on the subway.’

I think Keith Funston thought it was a joke—he started to laugh—and then he realized it was for real! He must have thought, ‘Here are these country bumpkins coming into the big city. They don't know anything about what life is like’"

Then Kirby said, “Most companies would have two limousines out in front of the hotel!”

In the HP Archives we have a picture of this event, which took place on March 17, 1961. Left to right are Dave Packard, New York Stock Exchange President Keith Funston, and Mortimer Marcus, HP stock specialist. Note the “HWP” on the board. That was HP’s ticker symbol until our merger with Compaq, when the symbol was changed to HPQ.

Lucile Packard, Woman of Grace

warrensander — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:06:00 GMT

A couple of weeks ago I attended a very moving event put on by the Los Altos History Museum. It was held in the local high school auditorium, and it was called “Lucile Packard, Woman of Grace.” A panel of 6 people (one of her daughters, and five men who had worked with Lucile on various philanthropic projects) talked about whom she was, what it was like to work with her, and what made her such an extraordinary person. And she was an extraordinary person.

A city girl, she married David Packard, who had grown up in Colorado and followed his lifelong pursuits of hunting, fishing, riding, and raising cattle. Lucile, her daughter informed the crowd, never even learned to ride a bike.

Neither did she particularly like housekeeping, cooking or gardening. What she did like—and believed in—was service. It started in college, when she worked with sick children, and continued throughout her life, ending with the achievement of building the Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford.

It was while I was listening to these men talk about her “strategic thinking” and “thinking big” that I began to realize how her values really were the same as her husband’s. They just applied the same values to their different arenas of influence.

Stories abound of Dave walking around and making sure he talked to the workers on the floor, rather than managers. One gentleman told the story of being escorted by the CEO on a site visit to a children’s hospital, only to lose Lucile. She was found sitting at a table talking to an occupational therapist and the child she was working with.

Dave was always concerned with the best product for the customer. Lucile’s touch was noted in the design of the nurse’s stations at the hospital, which had little scooped out areas in them so the children could see the nurses behind the counter.

Lucile made sure that every office at the Packard Foundation had a couch, and employees there were ordered never to sit behind a desk when interviewing potential grantees; they were to join them on the couch to make them feel comfortable. HP was famous for employees calling managers by their first names, including “Dave and Bill.”

Most of all, Lucile felt that her family had been so blessed that they had a duty to give their fortune away. She essentially started the Packard Foundation sitting around the kitchen table with her family, having the children participate in deciding which organizations would be awarded grants. And Hewlett-Packard Company made its first charitable donation in its second year of business.

I was truly inspired by what I heard at this presentation. It sounds silly, but I finally really appreciated that Lucile and Dave Packard were very special people. And as I was walking out, I became very sad, because as I looked around, everyone had white hair. The crowd was obviously the same generation as Lucile and Dave; it was full of their contemporaries. I recognized many of them—because I’m the archivist, and I know them. And I thought, how do I get this message to the next generations, the ones who work for HP now?

One way to get the message would be to attend the current exhibit, “Lucile and David Packard: Valued Partners,” at the Los Altos History Museum. Another way is to attend the next program on April 9. On that night, a group of people who worked closely with Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett will be remembering what it was about the founders that made HP such a special and long-lived company.

Hello, and welcome to my blog!

warrensander — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:43:00 GMT

Hello, and welcome to my blog! I’m Anna Mancini, and I’m Hewlett Packard’s corporate archivist. That means that I track the history of HP, and do my best to share HP’s exciting story with employees, customers, and the rest of the world. I thought a blog would be a good way to communicate the “aha” moments I have, since I usually have them when I’m alone at my desk or in the “back room” of the archives.

HP has had a corporate archives since 1987. It started the way a lot of corporate archives do – the company had an anniversary (its 50^th) coming up, and the communications department thought, “Uh-oh, we have to celebrate our history—now what?” They very wisely chose to hire two archival consultants, who came in and created a collection out of what was reportedly a big mess. Apparently they were shown about 50 boxes stacked up in a room, some of which were labeled “may be historical.” From those boxes, they created a collection of HP’s most important products, photos of the founders, and crucial documents. After the anniversary year was over, the communications folks found the collection so useful that they decided to keep the archives, and it has been growing ever since.

What is the oldest thing in the HP Archives? Well, it’s the prototype of our first product, the Model 200A audio oscillator, that Bill Hewlett built when he was a graduate student at Stanford University. Here’s a photo of it on our virtual museum: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/museum/earlyinstruments/0007/index.html

On that same page you can also read about how it was discovered in the basement of a dormitory at Stanford—almost 50 years after Bill Hewlett built it!