Saturday, March 22, 2014
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California,United States. It provides
hardware, software and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses
(SMBs) and large enterprises, including customers in the government, health and
education sectors.
The
company was founded in a one-car
garage in Palo Alto by William "Bill" Redington
Hewlett and Dave Packard. HP is the world's
leading PC manufacturer and has been since 2007, fending off a challenge by
Chinese manufacturer Lenovo,
according to Gartner. It specializes in developing and
manufacturing computing, data storage, and networking hardware, designing
software and delivering services. Major product lines include personal
computing devices, enterprise and industry standard servers, related storage devices,
networking products, software and a diverse range of printers and other imaging
products. HP markets its products to households, small- to medium-sized
businesses and enterprises directly as well as via online distribution,
consumer-electronics and office-supply retailers, software partners and major
technology vendors. HP also has strong services and consulting business around
its products and partner products. In 2012 it was the world's largest PC vendor by unit sales.
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard graduated with degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford
University in 1935. The company
originated in agarage in nearby Palo Alto during a fellowship they had with a
past professor, Frederick Terman at Stanford during the Great Depression. Terman was
considered a mentor to them in forming Hewlett-Packard. In 1939, Packard and Hewlett
established Hewlett-Packard (HP) in Packard's garage with an initial capital
investment of US$538. Hewlett and Packard tossed a coin to
decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or
Packard-Hewlett. HP incorporated on August 18, 1947,
and went public on November 6, 1957.
Of the
many projects they worked on, their very first financially successful product
was a precision audio oscillator,
the Model HP200A. Their
innovation was the use of a small incandescent light bulb (known as a "pilot light")
as a temperature dependent resistor in a critical portion of the circuit,
the negative feedback loop which stabilized the amplitude of the output
sinusoidal waveform. This allowed them to sell the Model 200A for $54.40 when
competitors were selling less stable oscillators for over $200. The Model 200
series of generators continued until at least 1972 as the 200AB, still
tube-based but improved in design through the years.
One of
the company's earliest customers was Walt
Disney Productions which bought
eight Model 200B oscillators for use in certifying
the Fantasound surround sound systems installed in theaters for the
movie Fantasia.
HP produces lines of
printers, scanners, digital cameras, calculators, PDAs, servers, workstation computers, and computers for home
and small-business use; many of the computers came from the 2002 merger with Compaq. HP as of 201 promotes itself as supplying not just
hardware and software, but also a full range of services to design, implement,
and support IT infrastructure.
Products and technology associated with IPG include:
·
Inkjet and LaserJet printers
·
consumables and related
products
·
Officejet all-in-one multifunction printer/scanner/faxes
·
Designjet and Scitex
Large Format Printers
·
Indigo Digital Press
·
HP Web Jetadmin printer
management software
·
HP Output Management
suite of software
·
LightScribe optical recording technology
·
HP Photosmart digital cameras and photo printers
·
HP SPaM
·
Snapfish by HP, a photo sharing and photo products service.
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