Hewlett-Packard is a collaboration of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard selling
audio oscillator from a garage in Palo Alto.
The first product was the resistance - capacitance
audio oscillator, a version of which was sold to Walt Disney Co.
Silicon Valley had a leader, Stanford engineering professor Frederick Terman, who attracted defense R&D projects to Palo Alto and helped his students William Hewlett and David Packard get customers for their first product, an
audio oscillator.
Litton provided space and equipment for the production of many of Hewlett and Packard's early orders." From his courses at Stanford and his work at GE, Packard had "gained confidence in his ability to handle the legal and business matters of the young company." HP's first "real product" was an
audio oscillator Hewlett had developed in Terman's lab.
HP's first product was a resistance-capacitance
audio oscillator based on a design developed by Hewlett when he was in graduate school.
On the bottom rack was a commercial Hewlett-Packard
audio oscillator used to provide variable horizontal sweep so that I could measure the PRF of the radar.
Among HP's first notable clients was Walt Disney Productions, which in 1940 purchased
audio oscillators to produce Fantasia's "Fantasound," a precursor to surround sound, in movie theaters where the film was shown.
Here, viewers surrounded four turntables--modified by light switches, light sensors,
audio oscillators, contact microphones, variations in voltage, and manipulated radios--in search of a singular event, one that subtracts itself from daily life in the city.