Box 5, Folder 47 – General Speeches
January, 1996, Reading ‘The Wonderful ‘One Hoss Shay’
1/96, Copy of typewritten text of Oliver Wendell Holmes’ poem, ‘The Deacon’s Masterpiece’, or ‘The Wonderful One Hoss Shay’
Packard attended the 1996 HP General Managers meeting and, concluded a discussion of quality control by reading this poem to the managers.
Box 5, Folder 48 – General Speeches
January 18, 1996, HP Board Retirement for Bill Haynes and Shirley Hufstedler, no location stated
1/18/96, Copy of the typed text of his speech
“I was fortunate to be asked to join the board of Chevron in 1972. Otto Miller was the chairman, and upon his retirement in 1974, Bill Haynes was designated to follow him.
“For the next nine years or so, I had the opportunity to visit many of the Chevron activities around the world. I learned that Chevron had contributed to the welfare of those foreign cities and countries where they were involved. I also learned that Chevron was far more complicated than I thought before I joined their board! They had to be closely involved with many countries where they drilled and produced their oil. I also learned that there was a radical change developing and their foreign activity was going to be much more complicated in the future.
“The Hewlett-Packard Company was not very large at the time I joined the Chevron board. We had just introduced our hand-held calculators in 1972 and HP sales that year were $483 million with profits of $38 million. We thought that our business would grow very rapidly in the next few years and that our foreign business would become a much larger part of the total.
“It was very interesting to learn about the world-wide involvement of Chevron and Bill Haynes had a broad role in the major activities of the company. I didn’t think that HP was large enough at that time to ask Bill to join our board after he became chairman of Chevron. I also realized that he would be very busy during his first few years as chairman at Chevron.
“HP grew very rapidly during the next few years and in 1981 our sales were $3.528 billion and we asked Bill to join our board. He was elected at our shareholder’s meeting, February 24, 1981.
“Bill Haynes made a great contribution to our company during his term on the board of HP. His world-wide involvement in Chevron helped us in the expansion of our world-wide involvement.
“In 1990 we had some problems at HP. Bill took the lead on a board committee to help us get these problems solved. They did so, and HP has continued its expansion through this last year. Our sales in 1995 grew to $31.519 billion with a profit of $2.433 billion, and we expect our growth to continue at about the same rate in the future.
“Bill, we thank you for the excellent advice and counsel you have given us. We will miss you and we hope that we will see you often in the future.
“Bill and Rita, we all wish you many, many happy years ahead.
David Packard
Chairman Emeritus
Hewlett-Packard Company
Box 5, Folder 49 – General speeches
February 24, 1996 Monterey Bay Aquarium, New Wing Opening
“Ladies and Gentlemen:
“I am very pleased that you could join us at this historic event – the opening of the New Wing of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
“The first wing of the Aquarium was opened just twelve years ago. My family had never been involved in an aquarium before, but I was optimistic and thought it would be successful because we had excellent people helping us in every aspect of the design and construction.
“Our plan was based on the concept that the Aquarium should be designed to depict the habitats of the Monterey Bay. We also thought it should be educational as well as enjoyable and we hoped that the people who live in this area would come to think of it as ‘their’ Aquarium.
“Many of you here tonight have given us outstanding support in building this New Wing. I hope all of you will think of this as ‘your’ Aquarium. We want you all to enjoy it and we want you to feel free to give us your advice and counsel on things that will improve your Aquarium,
“There are, of course, some aspects we could have done better, but there were not very many. I think it is fair to say that many people think the Monterey Bay Aquarium is one of the best in the world. We want to keep it that way.
“We do have one of the best sites for an Aquarium. We have access to raw seawater from the Bay, and many of the exhibits could not have been done as well, in fact some could not have been done at all without that resource.
“There were two aspects of the Monterey Bay that were not included in the original plan. One was the outer boundary of the Bay where the habitats result from the interaction of the waters of the outer bay, and the waters of the Great Pacific Ocean which extends beyond the horizon to the west. That is the focus of the new Outer Bay exhibits you see here tonight.
“The Outer Bay and Open Sea are vast habitats which are home to large numbers of fast-swimming open sea fish such as tunas. We recognized early on that depicting these animals and habitats was going to be a challenging undertaking. We also realized that it would take a large building, large tanks and very advanced water systems. We decided that in order to do it right we needed to ask for some support from our friends and colleagues in the community, and established a goal to raise $20 million to complete these exhibits. The Aquarium had never before undertaken a major capital fund drive, and we were uncertain whether we would be successful. I am extremely pleased to say that, thanks to all of you here tonight, we were successful in meeting our goal. I am peronally very grateful to you – the response has been overwhelming to me and I really appreciate your support.
“The other habitat which was not adequately included in the first wing was the deep waters in the vast canyons of the Bay. Until now, technology was not available to fully explore these areas. This has been the focus of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (or MBARI).
“With the opening of this New Wing this year, we have a new deep water research system. This includes a new ocean research ship. The Western Flyer, and a new unmanned remote operating vehicle (ROV) which will go down to 12,000 feet below the surface of the Bay. This will go down to the deep waters of the canyons for exploration and research for the next few years.
“From the work of the highly skilled people at the Aquarium and MBARI and at other ocean research organizations around the Bay, we will add new exhibits, and real time views of the vast marine life which lives in these deep waters.
“The Western Flyer can go from here to Hawaii without refueling, and that is the longest span in a trip around the world.
“We hope to have some trips in the Bay from Moss Landing scheduled in the future and we will endeavor to have an opportunity for each of you to enjoy a ride out into the ocean on this fabulous ship.
“As you can see, the people involved in the Aquarium and MBARI have their focus on the future. We will be continuing to work on bringing new information to the public about the oceans and their importance. The new Outer Bay Wing is a major step toward this goal, and I offer my thanks to each one of you for your support of our capital campaign which made this new wing of the Aquarium possible. I hope you are as proud of our accomplishemnt as I am, and I hope you enjoy this evening of celebration.”
Box 5, Folder 50 – General Speeches
March 7, 1996, Remarks at Sigma Xi Forum on Science, Technology, and The Global society, San Diego, CA
3/7/96, Copy of typed transcript from tape made of Packard’s remarks at this Forum
“Ladies and Gentlemen,
“I am pleased to be part of this Sigma Xi forum and find that what I’ve heard thus far has been very stimulating. There are several things I want to talk about. The first thing I want to show you is a copy of Charles Dickens’ classic story A Christmas Carol, which was taken entirely off the Internet and reproduced with ink jet printers. Look at the quality of the color on that. These books are made one at a time, and the cost is about fourteen dollars a book, mostly in the binding. So in the future, if you don’t happen to have a library, you can still get whatever you want. We’re working with the Library of Congress to make more books available on the Internet. This is something we hope will make a contribution to the future.
“The next thing I want to talk about is high-intensity, light-emitting diodes. We have been producing these for some time. It turns out that if the tail lights, brake lights and turn signals on an automobile – if the incandescent lights are replaced with light emitting-diodes – it will give you one extra mile per gallon of gasoline. It will save that much energy. We just announced a very large program devoted to this, and the plant that we’re building down here is part of it. This is going to be a very important activity.
“The next thing I want to talk about has to do with a basic change in our concept of science.
All the technology we put into place right after World War II was based on a theory that the atom was the smallest particle in the world. It had neutrons and protons. From that you start the periodic table, and you design an atom bomb, and it met all the requirements of that time. Shortly after World War II, we and our allies undertook a massive program in high-energy physics. We did that because we thought we might find something that would give us a decisive advantage over our adversaries. That did not happen.
“What did happen is that we discovered the atom is not the smallest particle in the world. It consists of ten smaller particles, with various forces – I don’t completely understand them myself. But the fundamental difference is this: With the science we had at the end of World War II, you could reproduce things that occurred in nature. You could make artificial diamonds, for example. With the science we now have, we can make things that do not occur in nature. We can make articles that are harder than diamonds. We’ve already done that. And the range of things that have come out of this is just astounding. I think that’s going to be a tremendously importat contribution in the years ahead.
“Now, the other thing I want to talk about is the basic level of research and development that’s being conducted in this country. Our company, on a worldwide basis, does about three billion dollars worth of research per year, and with the growth we’re generating, we’re adding two billion dollars a year of new research and development. The reason we’re not adding more than that is because we simply cannot find enough people to do that much fundamental research every year.
“We would spend three billion if we could, but there are just not enough people available. We simply cannot hire good people rapidly enough. I don’t know what that suggests in terms of our worldwide situation, but I think it really says that basically there is a lot more support for research and development from the industrial world than some of the members [of Sigma Xi] have talked about. But too many companies today are entirely focused on the next quarter. What counts is the long run, but they’ve completely distorted the emphasis on what you do, and if that could be corrected, it would be a tremendous improvement. We can’t operate this world on a quarter-to-quarter basis.
“That concludes what I wanted to talk about today, and thank you Mr. Chairman for allowing me to be here to make this presentation.
5/6/96, Copy of letter to Gretchen Dennis, Packard’s secretary, from J. Renee Keever, Director of Development, Sigma Xi Society enclosing a dopy of the transcript made of Packard’s remarks.”
David Packard passed away March 26, 1996
