In 1938, a tiny one-car garage behind a Palo Alto house became the staging ground for a revolution. Dave Packard and his wife Lucile rented the three-room first-floor apartment at 367 Addison Avenue for $45 a month. Bill Hewlett, Daves Stanford classmate, slept in the wooden shed out back. They had a workbench, a drill press, a soldering iron, and exactly 538 dollars in startup capital. It was cramped. But they made it work. Their first viable product, the Model 200A audio oscillator, took shape right there on that concrete floor. They named it the 200A to make people think they were an established company with a long line of products. It worked.
Walt Disney changed everything for them. In 1939, Disneys sound engineers were preparing to produce the film Fantasia and needed to test theater sound systems. They ordered eight of the modified Model 200B oscillators from the garage startup at $71.50 each. That single purchase kept the heaters running during the winter. Decades later, Hewlett-Packard bought the property back for $1.7 million, painstakingly restoring the garage to its 1938 state. No replica, but the actual redwood board-and-batten structure where modern tech culture began. Today, California State Landmark 976 officially recognizes the property as the birthplace of Silicon Valley. Actually, that label fits perfectly. The garage represents the archetype of the garage-based startup, a mythos that Apple, Google, and Amazon later copied.
- T Walker
What Makes Hewlett--Packard House and Garage Special:
