About the company The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly known as HP, is a large global corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. Its products are concentrated in the computing, printing and digital imaging sectors. It also sells software and services. History and FactsHP was founded in 1939 by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, both 1934 graduates of Stanford University, as a manufacturer of test and measurement instruments. Their first product was a precision audio oscillator, the Model 200A. Their innovation was to use a light bulb as a temperature-stabilized resistor in a critical part of the circuit. This allowed them to sell the Model 200A for $54.40 while competitors were selling less stable oscillators for over $200. One of their first customers was Walt Disney Productions, which purchased eight Model 200B oscillators (at $71.50 each) to be used to test the Fantasound. stereophonic sound system for the film Fantasia.HP is recognized by Wired magazine as the manufacturer of the world's first personal computer, in 1968, the Hewlett-Packard 9100A. HP called it a desktop calculator because, as Bill Hewlett said, "If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our customers' computer gurus because it didn't look like an IBM. So we decided to call it a desktop calculator." calculator and all this nonsense disappeared". The company has gained global respect for a variety of products.