1947: Eight years after its founding, Hewlett-Packard incorporates. The tiny garage in Palo Alto, California, where the company originated is now regarded as the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

Plenty of rock bands have come out of garages, and Jobs and Wozniak noodled around in one with their goofy little computer, too, but Hewlett-Packard must be considered the mother of all garage productions.

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard met as engineering students at Stanford back in the early ’30s and cemented their lifelong friendship during a post-graduation camping trip. Packard went off to take a job with General Electric, while Hewlett went on to postgraduate studies. They were reunited by Stanford prof Fred Terman, who encouraged the two to “make a run for it.”

With a nut of $500 in cash [about $8,000 in today's money] borrowed from Terman, plus a used Sears, Roebuck drill press, Hewlett-Packard swung into action in the small shed behind Packard’s modest house at 367 Addison Ave. The company’s first product, released in 1938, was an audio oscillator used for testing sound equipment. When the Walt Disney Co. bought eight of them to develop the technically advanced movie Fantasia, HP was off and running.

Packard and Hewlett (and that’s the last time you’ll see the names in that order) made the partnership permanent Jan. 1, 1939. The formal name was determined by the gracious winner of a coin toss. Even though Packard won the toss, he apparently liked the way “Hewlett-Packard” sounded, so they went with that. He never had reason to regret the choice.

Hewlett-Packard’s rise as a tech powerhouse is a story that’s been told ad nauseam. The electronics products were first-rate and eagerly embraced. Want became need with the coming of World War II, and HP quickly grew, moving out of Packard’s garage in 1940.

But the company was innovative in another, perhaps less-known way, that’s equally important. Thanks to the humanistic sensibilities of Messrs. Hewlett and Packard, HP also demonstrated a new type of management technique, one that placed a premium on the workers and their happiness. This open-management style was the prototype for how many technology companies, particularly in Silicon Valley, would operate decades later.

Packard, especially, was interested in fostering a relaxed working atmosphere. In practicing “management by walking around,” he devised what became known as his 11 simple rules. He also practiced what he preached. Once, when an engineer defied his direct order to stop work on an oscilloscope that later became a commercial success, Packard had a special medal struck for the man, inscribed: “Extraordinary Contempt and Defiance Beyond the Usual Call of Engineering.”

HP further softened the hierarchy by establishing open cubicles and not putting doors on management offices. It also provided medical coverage to its employees at a time when that was not generally done.

Source: Hewlett-Packard

Photo: The garage where Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard went to work on their first projects together is now a California Historic Landmark. (Courtesy ddebold/Flickr)

This article first appeared on Wired.com Aug. 18, 2008.