Changing Technology's Oil Out Back
The garage where Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett started Hewlett-Packard, while essentially founding Silicon Valley as a technology center, has now been listed on the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service.
"The significance of the garage
and the house is more associated with the entrepreneurial spirit in
which it was developed," said Paul Lusignan, a historian with the
National Register of Historic Places in Washington. "If you look at the
history of HP, there are probably better buildings that represent its
developments in technology. What this building represents is entrepreneurship."
The company embarked on a campaign in 2004 to restore the garage and the house to its state from the late 1930s.
Guys with skinny ties and thick glasses and slide rules in the pocket of their short-sleeve white polyester shirts invented the world we live in. And as usual, their garage never has room for a car in it.