On this date in 1943 a little remembered event occurred. The first company newsletter was published. It was not given the name Watts Current until several issues later but it did set the stage for the kind of employee engagement the company would become so famous for.

At this time the company was small by today’s standards but it had grown significantly since 1938 when it was just Bill and Dave in the old Palo Alto garage. By October of 1943 the company had 129 employees and was established in the Redwood Building in Palo Alto, completed early in 1943. At that time the company had only 16 products in its catalog including: Audio Oscillators, Signal Generators, Harmonic Analyzers, a Square Wave Generator, a Volt Meter, and three models of Frequency Measuring Equipment.

The US had entered the Second World War 22 months earlier and Bill Hewlett had taken a leave from HP in 1941 to serve as a Captain in the Army Signal Corps while Dave Packard kept everything running. The company was very involved in the war effort and produced equipment primarily for use on ships and aircraft. The first government contract was awarded in 1941 when Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) purchased six Model 205 Signal Generators. During this period the company was under a great deal of pressure due to rigorous and often demanding production schedules. This was also the time when the first “Beer Busts” began to help employees celebrate their hard work.

As a final thought, I wanted to share a quote from a letter Dave Packard wrote to the editor that was also included on the front page of the first newsletter, “I hope your paper will make the HP Co. a better place to work. You are free to use it in any way you wish. Do not hesitate to criticize anything you feel is wrong. Your criticism will be accepted in good spirit and your suggestions will be given fair valuation.“

This guide covers the Hewlett-Packard Journal from its first issue in 1949 to November 1998 when it switched to an online publication. Each entry consists of title, subtitle (or descriptive text), author/s and page numbers, as they were included in for each article indexed. Keywords such as product numbers, technologies, division names, etc, follow the entry if they were not included in the title or subtitle. Last updated March, 2004.

> Go to HP Journal Index

Although our archival program didn’t start until 1987 I had mentioned in the last post that efforts at starting one dated back to the early 1970’s. The instrument collection dates back even earlier though. In the mid 1960’s a group at HP’s Western Service Center (WSC) pulled together a selection of historical instruments that could be used for exhibits and promotional displays. Scott Grundemann, who was the quality assurance manager for WSC, was the person who began the project. From the company’s own equipment inventory along with some pieces added by supportive customers they assembled “some 15 vintage instruments” which were to become the beginning our historical instrument collection.

These pieces of equipment are easy to identify as they were given a small aluminum tag affixed to the case that has “Vintage Collection” engraved onto it. In our collection today we have 16 instruments with these tags including the one featured prominently in the center bottom of the image. It is the earliest audio oscillator we have in the collection and is easily recognizable by being painted black and having the distinct round cornered case. Any of you that have visited the History Center will recognize it as the Model 200 we have on display under the image of Bill and Dave in the garage.

The image itself is from a short article on the back of the August 1967 issue of Measure magazine where the project was described. Although it is unlabeled, the person seated behind the instruments is almost certainly Scott Grundemann. For his and his team’s early efforts at historical preservation I want to extend a belated “thank you” on behalf of the collection and all the visitors who have enjoyed seeing these early instruments over the years.

For the first post I thought it would be best to start at the beginning. In this case I don’t mean the original business plan or even the garage. I want to begin this blog with the origins of the archives program here at Agilent. Corporate archives are relatively uncommon in the world of historical preservation since not many company’s take on the challenge of staffing and supporting endeavors to safeguard their legacy for employees, customers and historians.

It‘s probably not a great surprise that the original attempts to start a historical collection date back to the early 1970’s. However, the archives program itself didn’t begin until 1987 when the company’s 50 th Anniversary project was begun and there was an immediate need to not only asses and organize HP’s historical resources but to make them accessible as well. With nearly five decades worth of material that was no small task.

Later that year the work on the anniversary project went from being a temporary effort to a permanent archival program within Corporate Public Relations Services. The original objectives were to identify, collect, preserve and provide access to the company’s vast array of historical material. It this very well and over time the collection grew and needed larger and larger accommodations.

When the test and measurement divisions of HP split from the company in 1999 to form Agilent Technologies the historical collection split as well. After many discussions it was decided that the collection would be split along product lines and where necessary items would be duplicated so both collections could share those materials. It is important to note here that because the original product lines were all test and measurement equipment, the bulk of the early documents and instruments all came with us to Agilent.

The collection continues to grow and today it is part of the Agilent Foundation. In this capacity it not only serves to preserve the company’s history but has additionally added a History Center where anyone can view displays about the company’s long legacy of innovation. The History Center and Archives has hundreds of visitors every year that come from all over the world. True, many of these are customers visiting the site for other reasons as well, but there are also a significant percentage of visitors who come simply to enjoy the collection on its own merits and to get a glimpse of what is one of the most important companies in the History of the Silicon Valley.