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HP was founded in 1939 by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, who had both graduated from Stanford University in 1934, as a manufacturer of test and measurement instruments. Their first product was a precision audio oscillator, the Model 200A. Their innovation was the use of a light bulb as a temperature stabilized resistor in a critical portion of the circuit. This allowed them to sell the Model 200A for $54.40 when competitors were selling less stable oscillators for over US$ 200. One of their earliest customers was Walt Disney Productions, who bought eight Model 200B oscillators (at $71.50 each) for use in testing the Fantasound stereophonic sound system for the movie FantasiaFantasia has other uses, see Fantasia (disambiguation Fantasia (1940) is an motion picture which was a Walt Disney experiment in animation and music. The soundtrack of the film consists of seven pieces of classical music, played by the Philadelphia Orches.
HP is acknowledged by Wired magazine as the producer of the world's first personal computerThe term personal computer or PC has three meanings: IBM's range of PCs that led to the use of the term see IBM PC. A generic term used to describe all microcomputers (mentioned here). A generic term sometimes used to describe a computer based on IBM's or, in 1968Events Undated Booker Prize for Fiction is established by Booker plc. 1968 is known as the year of the Prague Spring and also the year of the Paris riots. The ASCII character code is standardized as ANSI Standard X3. Nauru adopt his national anthem of the. HP called it a desktop calculator because, as Bill 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 IBMAn IBM mainframe is an International Business Machines (IBM)-made mainframe computer, i. a traditionally "large" high-performance computer (in terms of price tag, physical size, transaction processing and I/O performance), although usually not as expensiv. We therefore decided to call it a calculator, and all such nonsense disappeared".
The company earned global respect for a variety of products. They introduced the world's first handheld scientific electronic calculatorA calculator is a device for performing numerical calculations. It should not be confused with a calculating machine. Nowadays many people have a calculator with them as part of their mobile phone and/or personal digital assistant. Engineers and accountan in 19721972 is a leap year starting on Saturday (click link for calendar). Events January events January 2 the Pierre Hotel Heist Six men rob the safety deposit boxes of the Pierre Hotel in New York City. Loot is at least $4 million January 5 President of the Un (the HP-35The HP-35 was Hewlett-Packard's first pocket calculator and the world's first scientific pocket calculator (a calculator with trigonometric and exponential functions). Like some of HP's desktop calculators it used reverse Polish notation. Introduced at US), the first handheld programmable in 1974 (the HP-65), and the first alphanumeric, programmable, expandable in 1979 (the HP-41C). Like their scientific and business calculators, their oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and other measurement instruments have a reputation for sturdiness and usability (the latter products are now part of spin-off Agilent's product line). The company's design philosophy in this period was summarized as "design for the guy on the next bench".
HP is recognized as the symbolic founder of Silicon Valley, although it did not actively investigate semiconductor devices until a few years after the " Traitorous Eight" had 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 the products using these devices.