A Brief History of Digital, Compaq, and Hewlett-Packard


Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was founded by Ken Olsen in 1957. In those days the word computer conjured up visions of mammoth machines in huge rooms with one glass wall for visitor viewing. This is not the future Olsen saw, and hence he did not want that word in his company title. Instead, Olsen's view for computers was a ubiquitous laboratory instrument. Unfortunately, he never imagined his computers in the hands of individuals. In 1992 Olsen retired. In 1998 DEC was sold to Compaq in the largest-ever acquisition in the industry. Finally, in 2002, Compaq was sold to Hewlett-Packard.

Compaq was founded by three Texas Instruments (TI) dropouts—Rod Canion, Jim Harris, and Bill Murto—in 1982. By 1987 Compaq had built 1 million computers. Compaq has never been an engineering company in the sense that DEC was and HP is today; however, Compaq was innovative in that it was the first company to even attempt to beat IBM at its own game in the PC market. IBM's PC was taking corporate America by storm, and no one could touch them because their software-hardware interface (called BIOS) was copyrighted and IBM was not licensing it to anyone. Compaq's founders reverse-engineered IBM's BIOS (a legal move to outwit the copyright protection) and produced the first IBM clone. This meant that any software written for an IBM PC would also run on a Compaq PC. From that point on IBM gradually lost the PC business, because Compaq and other clone makers could produce their products faster and cheaper than IBM. IBM's corporate mindset was still in mainframes and simply could not compete with the agile startups. IBM's reputation made the PC respectable for businesses, but Compaq's pricing and marketing made the PC more available and affordable. Of the three founders, only Canion spent significant time with the company. He moved out around 1991.

Hewlett-Packard began its corporate life in 1939 designing and manufacturing scientific instruments. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard's first product (in 1938) was an audio signal generator used in Walt Disney's original version of Fantasia. In 1966 HP made its initial entry into the computer industry with the HP 2116A used to control test and measurement instruments. In 1968 HP introduced the desktop scientific calculator, the HP 9100A. It was advertised as a personal computer, the first time that term was used. In 1972 HP introduced the first scientific handheld calculator, the HP-35, banishing the slide rule forever.

In 1983 HP released its first versions of the PC called the HP-150. I bought my first computer in 1984—an HP-150. It was unique in two ways: (1) it had a finger-activated cursor (HP called it a touch screen), and (2) it had a 3 1/2-inch floppy drive. [1] HP's machine was incompatible with software written for IBM PCs, however, because of its incompatible BIOS, as described previously. Along with my HP-150, I also bought an HP ThinkJet printer, which was first available in 1984. It was a forerunner of most of today's inexpensive printers. Another long-forgotten HP innovation was the first truly portable PC, called the HP-110. It weighed only 8 pounds and had several built-in applications in ROM (this was before hard drives) and LCD display. It was clearly well ahead of its time, but it too was incompatible with IBM hardware and software. In 1986 HP was experimenting with RISC architecture. In 1994 HP began collaborating with Intel to develop what we now know as the IA-64, the Itanium.

Although HP computers never made much of a dent in the marketplace, its printers more than compensated for this deficiency. The laser printer was introduced in 1980, but that technology did not take off until the LaserJet (a spinoff on the ThinkJet) was introduced in 1984. That printer started the "laser printer wars" that are still going on today.

In 2000 HP's scientific instrument business was split off into a new company called Agilent Technologies, and the computer and printer business retained the HP name. Hewlett retired in 1987 and Packard retired in 1993. The garage in which Dave and Bill started the business in 1938 is now a California Registered Landmark.

[1]Apple also introduced the 3 1/2-inch floppy with the first Macintosh in 1984.




Getting Started with OpenVMS System Management
Getting Started with OpenVMS System Management (HP Technologies)
ISBN: 1555582818
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 130
Authors: David Miller

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