Box 5, Folder 42A – General Speeches
January 5, 1995, Remarks at Memorial Service for Jack L. Shepard, Stanford Memorial Church
1/5/95, Copy of typewritten, with large type, text of speech
Packard says he has known Jack Shepard for many years, “and I have admired his many leadership activities since he graduated Stanford in 1953.
Packard tells of “developing a close personal relationship” with Shepard while working with him on the fund raising project at Stanford, called PACE. He says he and Jack “spent many days together, rounding up cattle on our San Jose Ranch and hunting and fishing together.
“Jack was a leader in all of his many lifetime activities. Jack made a better world for everyone his life touched.”
1/3/95, Copy of typewritten biographical summary of Jack Shepard
1/4/95, Typewritten copy of more extensive biography
1/5/95, Photocopy of cover of memorial service program
Undated, Copy of typewritten note to Packard saying Mrs. Shepard asked if he would says a few words at his memorial service
Box 5, Folder 42B – General Speeches
March 10, 1995, Remarks at Colorado College, Denver, CO
3/10/95, Copy of typewritten text of speech
Packard says he feels very close to the College – “as I would had I been a student here.”
He tells of his mother and father both graduating here in the class of 1902. “My father was the captain of the football team which won the state championship in 1902. I spent many hours listening to him and his teammates of that championship team talk about it – they remembered every play, in every game and every detail of each game.”
Packard’s father wanted him to follow in his footsteps as a lawyer, but he says he had “already decided to be an engineer.” He says the University of Colorado at Boulder had a fine engineering school, and he had “always assumed he would attend college there.”
But he explains that his plans for college changed after he drove his mother and sister to California in 1929. In Palo Alto they visited one of his mother’s classmates, a Mrs. Neff, whose daughter, Alice, was attending Stanford. He says Alice took him on a tour of Stanford and he learned they also had a good engineering school. So he applied at both schools and says he was “rather surprised that I was admitted [at Stanford].”
“When I graduated.” he continues, “I received a job offer from GE in Schenectady, New York. Through a series of events I spent only three and one half years at GE, and with Bill Hewlett I established the Hewlett-Packard Company in 1939.
Packard says he wants to “talk about a major change which is now taking place in the world. This change will make the twenty-first century much more interesting and much more complex than the twentieth century has been. He explains how up until World War II science taught that the atom was the smallest particle in the universe. After WW II we “discovered that the atom was not the smallest particle in the universe We learned that an atom was made up of ten smaller particles, that there were weak forces and strong forces within the atom which did not follow Newtonian laws of gravity.
“With the earlier image of the atom we could construct things that occurred in nature, like artificial diamonds. With the new knowledge, we can construct materials that do not occur in nature, materials harder than diamonds, glass that is ductile, and many more materials that were not available to us in the past.”
“We are beginning to see how genetic engineering will make plants and animals that are used for food much more efficient and will make it possible to provide food for a rapid increase in the world population.
“Even more exciting is the possibility of incorporating genetic products with large scale integrated circuits in ways no one ever thought of in the past.
“I had the honor of addressing the graduating class in 1964. I predicted some of the things that would happen during their lifetime – that we would travel in space and that a man would walk on the moon.
“I am quite sure some, if not most of that graduating class, did not believe that what I told them would happen. I received an invitation from that graduating class to join them at their 25th reunion, because everything I predicted at their graduation had come true.
“I do not expect what I have told you today to come true during my lifetime, but I am quite sure it will during yours.
“This brings me to another prediction. Within the next few years there will be a major change in college and university education. Every graduate will have had to take a basic course in science. For in the future there can not be a liberal education without a basic course in science.
I am working with the president of Stanford to incorporate this change within the next few years. I would Colorado College to do the same.”
“President Mohrman and distinguished members of the faculty, I feel greatly honored to speak with you here today. Colorado College is considered to be one of the best private colleges in the country. I hope whatever help I can provide in funding will help you to keep it that way.”
Box 5, Folder 43 – General Speeches
March 29, 1995, Remarks on Hewlett and Packard Receiving the Lemelson-MIT Award
The Lemelson-MIT Prize Program was established in 1994 to recognize the nation’s most talented inventors and innovators and to establish positive role models for American youngsters. The program’s Lifetime Achievement Award honors individuals for career-long accomplishments in invention and innovation.
3/29/95, Copy of typewritten draft of Packard’s speech
Packard says “It is a special pleasure to share this recognition with my lifetime business partner and friend, Bill Hewlett.
“The success of our company,” Packard says, “since its beginning in 1939 has been highly dependent on new products. We wanted all of our new products to be important contributions to the progress of technology.
“Fortunately, we have been able to make a number of important contributions; beginning with the resistance stabilized audio oscillator which Bill Hewlett invented when he was still working in Fred Terman’s laboratory at Stanford.
“Most of the progress of technology in the world in the last half of the twentieth century came from new products, many of which were developed largely in our universities all across the country.
“Closely following the end of World War II both we and our allies mounted a large program in high energy physics. We did this because we thought they might find something which would give us a decisive advantage over our adversaries.
“That did not happen – but from this activity we learned that an atom was not the smallest particle in the universe. Instead, an atom had 10 separate particles and had weak forces and strong forces that did not follow the Newtonian laws of gravity.
“With this new discovery we can make things that do not occur in nature. We can make materials harder than diamonds and glass that is ductile, and this new knowledge is the basis for genetic engineering.
“What this means is that the exponential growth of the twenty-first century will be far larger than the exponential growth we have achieved since Bill Hewlett and I started our company in 1939,
“It is unfortunate that our federal government has not recognized this great opportunity for the twenty-first century. Sometime, hopefully soon, they will recognize the great mistake they are making and get our country back on the right track again.
“I applaud Mr. Lemelson and MIT for recognizing this important need and establishing this award.
“I also want to thank Mr. Thurow and the selection committee.
“This award will enable the young inventor who will receive the $500,000 to make some important contribution to technology during his professional career.
“These contributions will be important in expanding our technology in the next century. From this will come a better life for all of the people in our country, indeed, for all of the people in the world.”
3/29/95, Copy of news release describing the award and Hewlett and Packard’s careers
Box 5, Folder 43A – General Speeches
April 10, 1995, Founders of the Future – Remarks at Dinner Honoring William Hewlett and David Packard, Burnham Pavilion, Stanford University.
4/10/95, Copy of typewritten text of speech by Packard
“President Casper,
distinguished members of the Board of Trustees, ladies and gentlemen.
“The success Bill and I have enjoyed and the company we built has been entirely dependent on Stanford.
“Without Fred Terman’s counsel and guidance, the Hewlett-Packard Company would never have been started.
“Our company has had the benefit from the beginning, of inventions developed in the laboratories of Stanford and the scientists and engineers who were educated there.
“The purpose of this New Science and Engineering quadrangle we are funding is to make available to generations of young people in the future, the same kind of opportunities Bill and I have had.
“As I looked over the list of guests here tonight it became evident that every one of you has been helpful to Bill and me and to our company. On behalf of both of us, I want to thank you.
“I met with President Casper last week and he said he did not know what was going to happen in the future.
“I told him I was glad to hear him say that, because those people who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do!
“The technology we have used in the twentieth century was based on science which had developed over several thousand years and was largely in place at the beginning of this century.
“That science considered the atom to be the smallest particle in the universe. The atom had a nucleus consisting of protons and neutrons circled by rings of electrons.
“From that image the Periodic Table was built, the atom bomb was designed and we could duplicate some of the materials that occur in nature, such as artificial diamonds.
“Right after the end of World War II the United States, our allies in Europe and the Soviet Union embarked on a very large program of high energy physics.
“we did this because we thought we might discover something which would give us a decisive advantage over our adversaries. I am quite sure the scientists involved considered there might be some other outcome from this massive project. None of the participants found anything that would be a decisive advantage.
“They discovered something that is considerably more important – that an atom is not the smallest article in the universe, that it contains ten smaller particles which are influenced by forces that do not follow Newton’s laws of gravity.
“From this new knowledge it is possible to make things that do not occur in nature such as materials harder than diamonds, glass that is ductile and, indeed, this new knowledge provided the basis for genetic engineering. I am quite sure that no one can predict the outcome, but there will be opportunity for ingenuity in the 21st century vastly greater than anything in the past.”
4/10/95, Copy of the printed invitation to this dinner
4/10/95, Copy of typewritten speech made on this occasion by Stanford President, Gerhard Casper. He describes in interesting detail the long and productive relationship that existed between Stanford and David Packard and Bill Hewlett.
Box 5, Folder 44 – General Speeches
June 8, 1995, Entrepreneurship and the High Technology Revolution, The Independent Institute, San Francisco, CA
Packard was being honored by the Institute. David Theroux, President of the Institute chaired the occasion and George P. Shultz and Edwin Zschau spoke about their experiences with knowing Packard. The Institute invites experts on social and economic issues, especially as they relate to important new books. Thus the discussions frequently related to issues described in Packard’s recent book The HP Way.
6/8/95, Copy of typewritten transcript of the speakers at this event: Theroux acting as Chairman, Shultz and Zschau talking about Packard, Packard’s address, and then Theroux putting questions to Packard for comment.
Packard says he and Bill Hewlett lived through various social and economic periods as they grew up – the ‘Roaring Twenties’ when they were in grade school, and the Great Depression when they were in college.
“The experience both of us had during [the depression] period,” Packard says, “was responsible for some of the important policies we followed as we built our company. Those policies we followed included our strong policy to finance our company by reinvesting our profits to finance our growth and to avoid any long-term debt. My experience as a youth in our Pueblo, Colorado, neighborhood gave me a strong dedication to the importance of philanthropy, and a strong commitment to the importance of fishing!
“Some of the other important policies and practices were the result of the advice we received from Fred Terman at Stanford University.
“We did not have any master plan about what we thought we might accomplish in the future. In the beginning, we simply wanted to create jobs for ourselves. In those days, one could live on three dollars a day. And, that is what the job I took with General Electric Company paid in 1935.
“We did decide at the beginning that we wanted to do something that was new and useful. We did not want to duplicate products that were already in the market – we did not want to be a ‘me too’ company.
“In the spring of 1934, I received a job offer from the General Electric Company. Fred Terman encouraged me to take that job. He said I would learn many things that would be helpful when we started our own company. He also thought Bill would benefit from some additional graduate education.
“My job at the General Electric Company did not start until the spring of 1935. When I arrived at G.E. I first met with Mr. Boring who had interviewed me at Stanford and knew I was interested in electronics, which was then called radio engineering. He told me there was no future for radio engineering at G.E. and that I should concentrate my work there on motors, generators and power transmission systems. I have often thought of the irony of that advice because the Hewlett-Packard Company is now much larger than the entire General Electric Company was at that time.
“Subsequently, our company limited its involvement to electronic instruments during the 1950s, but in the middle of the 1960s we began our involvement in digital products, including electronic calculators and computers. We had to take considerable time to catch up in this field. We were not in a position to attract the best talent from outside the company, and the leadership in the company came mostly from our own engineers who had concentrated their work on electronic instruments.
“In the decade of the 1970s, we built up our strength in computers and we were able to attract some important talent in this field. As our strength has grown, we have now become one of the best computer companies in the world. Today, our company has thousands of products and customers all over the world.
“There is no way any chief executive officer of a major company today can know everything involved and be able to make all the decisions. One of the reasons why the problem of bureaucracies can develop results from the fact that a chief executive officer will have a number of people covering all these matters, trying to advise the chief executive on all of what is happening in all the areas of operations.
“Now we got to a point one time when to approve any major sales decision, we had to receive approval from fourteen committees. Well, we fixed that problem by cutting it down to one. Instead, people involved in operations all around the company received responsibility themselves to decide what they wanted to do. It was their responsibility to make sure that their decisions fit in with what was the company’s on-line goals in the field. For example, without such responsibility, by the time top management discovered that there existed a problem with a computer in the system and attempted to correct the situation, another situation would have developed, altering the earlier problem altogether.
“Not every company has the problems that we have – a very large number of products or a very large number of customers all over the world. Some companies have a much smaller group of customers, but in many ways, the same group of management principles apply.
“There are in fact several things a chief executive officer must do. One of them is to make sure that there is a strong internal audit capability because you simply cannot have innovative accounting policies. That has to be reinforced very rigidly, and in some cases, companies come into some areas needing an audit committee which if not followed can cause a company a lot of trouble.
“Now, the second thing, of course you have to have a common experience, have common warranty policies, and a number of those things. And then the chief executive officer also has the responsibility to look for new areas in which the company can make a contribution. And doing so, of course, what’s important is having the advice and counsel of all those people throughout the company.
“These are the sort of principles that I discuss in our book because they are important to success.”
After Packard’s remarks David Theroux submits several questions from the audience to him for his response.
Q. What worries you most when thinking ahead, particularly when thinking of your own family, children and grandchildren?
A. “I am concerned that the young people of the future have the same opportunities that Bill and I have had. And, we believe that it is our responsibility to do what we can to make that come about.”
Q. Thank you for your contributions, please share with us your vision of what high tech will be like in the year 2000?
A. “Something that is very important that has caught on in the world in the 20th century. Of all the technology that was used up to the end of World War II, technology since has changed everything for the future. Science had developed over a number of years leading to the development of the atomic bomb. But right after World War II, both we and our allies in response to the Soviet Union, undertook a major program in high energy physics, including the work at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. We believed that we might discover something that would give us a decisive advantage over our enemies. But, that did not happen. What did happen was that we learned that the atom was not the smallest particle in the world. The atom contains smaller particles held in place by the weak and strong forces which do not obey the Newtonian Law of Gravity.
“Now, the fundamental difference that is very important compared with the earlier technology that could create such substances as an artificial diamond, was that you could make things that did not occur in nature. And this change is the basis for example for today’s field of genetic engineering.
“However, if you look at the large-scale integrated circuit, which is the basis for all computers today, they are really just plainer devices. They don’t have three dimensions. But with the new technology, they will have three dimensions. And, that will provide many, many more options to consider for the future. I look at this as something extremely exciting and offering new possibilities which are hard to imagine. We are not just going to have an information super-highway, we will have a whole new world of new kinds of products, new kinds of things to do. And, we will be developing new jobs for a lot more people with these options from this tremendous new science.”
Q. What trends do you see today that are positive and which concern you?
A. “We have spent the better part of the 20th century dealing with communism. Now that we have gotten rid of it, we don’t really know what to do. Many of the post-communist countries of the world are having serious problems, such as we see in Bosnia. And, it is not at all clear how we can solve these problems. It might be done through the United Nations or other international organizations, but it will take the firm commitment of the United States for that to happen. And, the American people don’t want to get involved in a commitment of that kind – it would be like Vietnam again. Now that means that these areas of the world are going to suffer great losses. We certainly are not in a position to provide any optimal solutions.”
Q. At the ten year mark of Hewlett-Packard, there were about 200 employees, did you envision at that time that HP would be 100,000 strong and such a success today?
A. “We certainly did not envision that the company would ever be as large as it is today. We thought that we would be successful, but never foresaw this size. Bill and I have said many times that because the principles of the HP way apply, as the company gets larger, its success depended entirely on the results of the people involved. Fortunately, that is what has happened, and in publishing The HP Way, we have had a tremendous response from the 100,000 employees all over the world.”
Q. What lessons can you share with us about management succession and what is the role of former leadership?
A.”I have always felt that any company that is really strong has management and people who will take over as time goes on. Filling positions from inside and doing the job very well, we are in very good shape. We have quite a number of people coming along. However, this poses one problem for us that we know about. Some of our people have become targets for other companies. And, Bill and I have always taken the position that if they want to do something to promote themselves, then more power t them.”
Q. Please comment on the many lawsuits increasingly taking place in the high technology industry, i.e. Microsoft, Intel, etc.?
A. “I have a lot of lawyer friends, and I have said may times that there are too many lawyers in the field. And, I have a joke about this: What is the difference between a dog run over on the highway and a lawyer run over on the highway? The skidmarks in front of the dog.”
Q. How well did your management philosophy work for the Department of Defense and what changes in government bureaucracy do you suggest?
A. ”We were interested in putting into effect at the Department of Defense some of our HP policies like ‘Management by Walking Around.’ Many of you know that Bob McNamara hated professional military people, and that was well known even then. But, I believed that we should really have them on our side. So, I made a point of having them come to our offices and similarly visit them in their offices.”
Q. How is HP solving the problem caused by the overload of information from the information highway? How do you process all this information in a 24 hour day.
A. “It is certainly clear that the information highway will generate more information than anyone can handle, and it will take discipline on the management level. On the other hand, having this information available is so important that we are going to be way ahead of the game by doing that. Our foundation is working on a program with the Library of congress. The Library of Congress has the largest collection of books and documents of anywhere in the world. We have been working to develop a course in American history with the Library of Congress people and several professors who are teaching American history. That program is going along very well. If you’re studying a particular city, you could just look up what it looked like 100 years ago. It’s an exciting program and it will be great for children and will have a tremendous amount of potential.”
Box 5, Folder 45 – General Speeches
November 8, 1995 – A salute to Dream Builders, Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose, CA
11/8/95, Copy of typewritten text of speech, very large type
“I want to express my appreciation to John Warnock and the Board of the Tech Museum for honoring me with their Chairman’s Award. I am very pleased to accept it.
“Tonight’s theme is ‘dreams.’ And making them come true. Everyone has dreams about what they want to do, or who they want to be in the future. When Bill Hewlett and I started our company 56 years ago, a couple could live on $100 per month. I do not recall that we had any grandiose dreams about what we wanted to do, although we probably dreamed about having $500 per month sometime in the future.
“I can recall only one specific dream I had – I saw our company name in neon lights – I saw it not from every freeway in the world – but from El Camino Real on the way into San Francisco.
“I am sure it is safe to say that we all have dreams. Some people dream about becoming rich – or about making more money – although it seems to me that when one has enough money to buy or do any thing they want, dreaming about making more money does not seem very rational – but then when I think about it, who am I to tell anyone what they should dream?
“In my own case, I did not dream about much until our foundation decided to have some of its own programs. It was then that I dreamed about making the Monterey Bay Aquarium the best aquarium in the world, and I dreamed about making the Children’s Hospital at Stanford the best medical facility for children in the world. I also dreamed about making the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute the best ocean science center in the world and making everything our foundation did, the very best in the world.
“In doing that, I also wanted to make the Hewlett-Packard Company the best in the world, which I guess was my dream from the very beginning in 1939. I did not think of it as a dream, but Bill and I wanted our company to make a contribution in everything we did – we did not want to be just a ‘me too’ company. And from all reports, we are achieving our goal.
“Once again, I thank you for this honor, and I look forward to the partnership between the Monterey Bay Aquarium, MBARI and the Tech Museum of Innovation in producing the ‘live link’ exhibit enabling people to experience exploration of the world’s oceans on a real-time basis right along with our scientists.
“I suppose you could also call this, ‘building on our dreams,’”
Box 5, Folder 45A – General Speeches
December 1, 1995, Barney Oliver Memorial
12/1/95, Copy of typewritten remarks by Packard
“I first met Barney Oliver 62 years ago. In the fall quarter of my senior year at Stanford, I enrolled in Professor Terman’s graduate course called ‘Radio Engineering.’ I was the first undergraduate allowed to take this course. A junior from Cal Tech enrolled at Stanford at the same time. He asked Fred Terman if he could also take this radio engineering class, and Professor Terman allowed him to do so with the stipulation that if he failed in the first mid-quarter examination he would have to drop out. Barney not only had the highest grade in that examination, he also got the highest grade in the class in every examination that year!
“In the spring of 1934, all the engineering students at Stanford began to worry about finding a job when they graduated. Bill Hewlett, Ed Porter and I decided that we would form our own company of we did not find satisfactory jobs, and Barney Oliver agreed to join us. It turned out that I received a job offer from the General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York. Professor Terman advised me to take that job because I would learn many things there that would be helpful when we eventually started our own company. He said that Bill Hewlett would benefit from several years of graduate work. After graduating, Barney took a job at the Bell Telephone Laboratories where he did some pioneering work with John Pierce on information theory. When the U.S. became involved in World War II, he shifted his work to radar.
“Bill Hewlett and I convinced him to join us at HP in 1952.
“Barney was not only a brilliant scientist, but also a great human being. I have never known anyone who did not like Barney. He also had a great sense of humor. On one occasion, Art Fong, one of our Chinese engineers, asked Barney to give him an evaluation on whether the project Art was working on would succeed. Barney’s response was, ‘It does not have a Chinaman’s chance!’
‘This statement from one of our HP employees sums up what everyone thought of Barney.”
‘It is one of the saddest tasks I have ever undertaken to inform you that this Thanksgiving evening, our dear friend, mentor, colleague and my boss, Barney Oliver, died of a heart attack. Barney was a good friend to a lot of people. I learned to admire and respect him during my nine years working with him. He was very generous, caring and always had time to chat if you came by his office.’
“After 62 years of working with Barney Oliver I consider him not only one of the best scientists I have ever known, but also one of the best friends I ever had.”
Box 4, Folder 46 – General Speeches
December 7, 1995, IEEE Computer Society Award
12/7/95, Acceptance Remarks to IEEE Computer Society
“Bill Hewlett and I thank you very much for this award. It is indeed a great honor to be numbered among the very distinguished people who have received this award in past years.
“While the program outlines how HP became involved in the computer business, I thought it might be interesting to cover this in more detail.
“In 1964 HP’s worldwide sales were $125 million and not one cent was from computers.
“In 1994 HP’s worldwide sales were $24 billion and 78% was from computers!
“This was a remarkable transformation of our company. It would be nice to say that we saw the profound effect computers would have on our business, and that we prepared ourselves to take early advantage of the computer age, Unfortunately, our record does not justify such pride. It is more accurate to say that we were pushed into computers by the revolution that was changing electronics.
“We did realize that computers could improve the accuracy of an instrument by ten fold or more, and a computer could format the output so it would be the most useful for the user.
“I thought we might gain some time by acquiring one of the small computer companies. I took a trip to New England to investigate several of the computer companies there. It turned out that the Digital Equipment Company (DEC), was the best by far, but I decided not to try to acquire DEC because we would have a difficult time correlating some of their basic policies with ours,
“I also visited Wang Laboratories where they were designing an electronic calculator. It was so complex that I decided we should not plan to get into the electronic calculator business.
“All of that changed, however, when a young man named Tom Osborne paid a visit to HP in 1966. Tom had worked across the bay for a mechanical calculator company, Smith Corona Marchant, a supplier of mechanical calculators. Tom had built a typewriter sized electronic calculator and had been showing it to possible buyers, but with no success.
“At HP he showed it to one of our senior engineers, Paul Stoft, and to Barney Oliver, and later to Bill Hewlett and me. We recognized that Tom had a little powerhouse of a machine that might be developed into a desk top calculator that swiftly and silently could calculate trigonometric, logarithmic, and hyperbolic functions and could be programmable as well. It would make obsolete, noisy mechanical calculators and the cumbersome tables of functions that crammed the engineer’s bookshelves.
“Working with Tom Osborne, a team of HP engineers developed the Model 9100 desktop calculator, highly successful in the market place, a truly innovative design. It was before the days of large-scale integrated circuits and used discreet components and a 14 layer printed circuit as the read-only memory.
“The most exciting part of the electronic calculator development was still to come. We had an excellent development program of light emitting diodes in our laboratory, but none of our divisions were interested in using them. With the event of large-scale integrated circuits which could be used as memory and as data processors, it became possible to meet Bill Hewlett’s challenge of developing an electronic calculator that would fit in your shirt pocket. Our development team did this and we introduced the HP Model 35 and later the HP Model 65. Sales for these calculators and their descendents total over 15 million units.
“After about two years, many other companies were making competitive calculators which drove the price sharply down. We did not follow the price down, but in the end we made more profit than any of these competitors.
“Getting back to the computer development, two of our engineers, Paul Stoft and Kay Magleby were experimenting with designing a computer. They gave me a vision of an HP computer controlling HP instruments that were connected to plotters and printers.
“Following this vision, in September 1964 we authorized the development of an HP computer which was to become our Model 2116. We found that we were selling more Model 2116s as stand-alone computers, than as controllers for instruments.
“Through a series of other steps our Model 2116 became, in 1972, our first general purpose computer, the HP 3000. This computer with its MPE operating system became one of the computer industry’s more enduring operating systems. More than twenty years after its introduction its descendant machines are just now entering their obsolescent phase. In the intervening years we designed many other computers and printers and plotters, until we are today one of the best computer companies in the world.
“As we look toward the future we see that there has been a watershed change that will have a profound effect on the computer industry. All of the technology that was used during the 20th century was based on science that was largely in place by 1900. This science was based on the concept that an atom was the smallest particle in the universe. It was thought the atom had a nucleus consisting of protons and neutrons, with rings of electrons around it. From this image the periodic table could be constructed and the atom bomb could be designed.
“Shortly after World War II the U.S. and its Allies, and the Soviet Union undertook a massive program in high energy physics. They did this because they thought something might be discovered that would give them decisive advantage over their adversaries.
“That did not happen. What did happen was that they discovered that the atom was not the smallest particle in the universe, that an atom contained ten smaller particles which had forces within the atom that did not follow the laws of Newtonian physics.
“With the old concept of the atom one could construct things that occur in nature, such as an artificial diamond. With the new science it is now possible to construct things that do not appear in nature, such as materials harder than diamonds. This new science covers the basic laws of genetic engineering, and it is difficult or impossible to predict what can be done. From this I predict it is going to be an exciting time for you people who will spend your lives in the 21st century.
“Again let me tell you that Bill Hewlett and I consider it to be a very great honor to be included among the distinguished people who have already received this honor.
“I will close by wishing you an exciting and productive time in the 21st century.”
12/15/95, Copy of a typewritten letter from Gretchen Dennis, Packard’s secretary, to Professor J. A. N. Lee, at Virginia Tech sendinghim a copy of the above speech.
