Hewlett-Packard, The Early Years

By Ed Sharpe

The historical journey you are about to embark upon began well before the formal starting date of Hewlett-Packard as a company. The setting was correct, the circumstances were aligned, and all the players were in their proper places for this saga to unfold. Had one of the conditions been different, these two dynamic individuals might not have met, and without the influences of their environment and of Fred Terman their meeting might not have progressed into what has become one of the leading instrumentation and computer companies in the world. -Ed Sharpe

The positive influence Fred Terman had in the world is shown by the history portrayed here of the Hewlett-Packard Company. Bill Hewlett and David Packard, who under the guidance and friendship of Fred Terman, built one of the leading instrument companies in the world. The Southwest Museum of Electricity and Communications is proud to present the history of Hewlett-Packard. Though not complete, this sketch gives an overall view of the early days of the people who made the company what it is.

We were fortunate to obtain a copy of an interview between Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. This taped interview took place starting on August 26, 1982, and consisted of another two parts at dates following the initial segment. Other sources are listed within the text, as well as in the credits section at the end of the article. Enjoy! - Edward A. Sharpe, Archivist.

The start of it all.

David Packard’s decision to come to Stanford was more or less a matter of chance, as events that happen to all of us often are. In the summer of 1929, Dave drove his mother and sister from Pueblo, Colorado, where their home was, to California. They spent some time in the Los Angeles area, in Hermosa Beach, and then went up to visit an old friend of Dave’s mother in Palo Alto. That family had three daughters. The oldest daughter was going to Stanford and she was very enthusiastic about the university, and took Dave around to examine the campus. At this time, Dave had already decided that he wished to study electrical engineering, however, he had in mind Colorado University which had a very good electrical engineering school. But the trip to California and the time he spent in Palo Alto in the summer of 1929, convinced him to submit an application to Stanford and he was accepted.

Dave also had a fascination with radio or wireless as it was called in those days. This interest and study grew in the early days of grade school, and continued for years to come. Dave was a regular visitor to the public library in Pueblo, and took out all the books about how to make electrical motors and other devices that would tend to make an experimenting mind quest for even further electrical knowledge. 

Conspirators in wireless waves.

Every inquisitive lad needs someone to conspire with, and Dave found this in a neighborhood chum several years his senior who lived in the house behind his. Dave Packard and Lloyd Penrose, who went on to be involved in the radio department of American Airlines, spent a lot of time building various devices including a radio. For an early detector of wireless waves they experimented with a coherer, but were disappointed due to the lack of sensitivity since there weren’t many good stations located close to their locale.

Dave Packard remembers his first really successful radio when he says, "I obtained one of the early vacuum tubes, a triode and I wired this thing up in a rather haywire manner..." In the early days, many first radios were built as a trailing mass of components and wire residing on the family’s dining room table, Dave’s radio was to be no exception to this development technique! Dave continues, "At that time we didn’t have any antenna but we had antenna eliminators that you could put in an electric light socket."

This technique was quite common in those days, and found extensive use particularly in high density neighborhoods in large cities. Folks who wanted to embark on the new exciting endeavor of radio listening either did not have room to string up a large antenna, or had no ambition to do so. Kids! - Don’t try this at home! Only the experienced experimenter should attempt this; if the wrong value capacitor is chosen, it could result in a transfer of the AC line current into your radio thus destroying the radio or the experimenter! 

Dave was able to pick up the signals, and was rewarded with receiving WHO in Des Moines, Iowa, and heard a very good program crowning his first truly successful radio construction adventure.

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By the time Dave enrolled in high school, he had become actively involved in amateur radio and had a ham license, 9DRV. In those early days he used Tuned Grid - Tuned Plate oscillators and Hartley oscillators. Later on he had crystal controlled transmitters, which provided greater frequency stability. The power supply for transmitters in those days utilized electrolytic rectifiers to change the alternating current into direct current. Since the large value filter capacitors that we now use in power supplies were not available, this caused a very large AC component to exist in the power supply voltage. The result? Really raspy signals being sent into the air! During his high school years, Dave stayed quite active in amateur radio and that of course whetted his appetite to learn more about radio and electronics in his future.

Bill Hewlett's introduction to radio.

Bill Hewlett traces his early interest in electronics to the first crystal radio that he built out of a combination of store bought parts, in conjunction with coils that he wound by hand. This set hooked up to a good antenna allowed Bill to be entertained by a lot of the local stations. There were a pretty fair number of stations around San Francisco. One of the stations that came to Bill Hewlett’s thoughts while remembering his early experience was KJBS that was owned by Julius Brunton and Sons. In looking through the massive collection of call books and radio magazines at the Southwest Museum of Electricity and Communications, we find this station operating at 1079 Kc with a total power output of 100 watts! All radio stations in those days had slogans, and the slogan for this station was ‘THE VOICE OF THE STORAGE BATTERY. The slogans used by radio stations during this period were either meant to amuse or to advertise. Since there is no amusement here, we know that Brunton sold storage batteries as part of their line.

A high school classmate of Bill’s, Ed Porter, took Bill up to his attic to see his ham radio station. Within the confines of this home laboratory resided the most haywire thing Bill had ever seen! Ed Porter's transmitter had electrolytic rectifiers pumping 1000 volts around on bare wires. Ed had already worked five continents on only one transmitting tube. 

Bill was on the fringes of ham radio, but it never took hold of him to the extent to move him to obtain a license of his own. With an interest in all things that were electrical, he built a Tesla coil for a project in physics class. Another project that Bill undertook was to build an electric furnace to make carbide.

Bill and Dave enter Stanford

Bill’s father, a medical doctor, had passed away when he was 12 years of age. No doubt his fathers early influence peaked Bill's early interest in the area of scientific studies.

He put in an application to Stanford and an official called his mother in, and he said, "Mrs. Hewlett, your son has applied to Stanford. There's nothing in his record that would justify my recommending him. Do you know why he wants to go?" and she replied, "Well, his father taught there" He asked, "Was his father Walter Albion Hewlett?" and she stated, "Yes." He replied, "He was the best student I ever had!" The official applied the 'like father - like son' theory and Bill was admitted!

Dave Packard’s father was an attorney in Pueblo Colorado, and he indicated that he hoped Dave would go into law too, but Dave actually never had any interest at all in a law career. Dave’s father had very little mechanical ability or technical interest so he didn’t actually give him any help in the things that Dave was working with, although both his mother and father gave him lots of encouragement to do whatever he wanted to do.

Besides his burning interest in technical areas, Dave Packard played football, basketball and track in high school and his favorite sports were basketball and track more so than football. 

Hard times were upon the majority of the people in the United States, as the Great Depression swept over the country in a wave in 1929. The event that made it possible for Dave to attend Stanford was that his father was appointed a referee in bankruptcy proceeding a year or so earlier but otherwise the law business was very poor. The fact that Dave’s father was gainfully employed made it possible for him to provide the support, with some assistance from jobs Dave held during his four years at Stanford.

Although tuition was $114 a quarter, the reader must realize that amount of money, in those days, would have purchased the bearer a fine used automobile. The dollar had far greater value! 

Dave, besides studying and working, participated in track during his freshman year at Stanford. Dave’s Coach, Dean Templeton, was very disappointed when Dave decided to slow down his participation in the track team. Dave remembers that he enjoyed track and participated in many facets of it such as broad jump, high jump, the hurdles, the discus and the shot put, and he recalls winning as many points in the little big meet as anyone up to that time.

Dave looked on attending Stanford as an opportunity to get an education and to do something beyond just athletics. He resolved not to go out for football when he arrived, but the peer pressures were just a little too much and so he did go out. He always made an effort to keep athletics from dominating his studies at Stanford.

ADD PHOTO

Dave was a tough, determined competitor as far back as his football playing days at Stanford University. Photo courtesy HP Archives.

Dave liked basketball and track although as it turned out he spent more time with football. He often looks back on his athletic experiences and says "I think you learn a lot of things in athletics and they’re very important in your later career." He continues on, "You understand the importance of competition and fair play and you develop a sense of the importance of teamwork."

Bill Hewlett remarks that, "It also forces you to organize your life a little bit better... to get in all the practice you really have to be better organized ..."

The meeting place - Stanford University
or, pigskin and electric waves.

The relationship between these two Stanford students started when they both went out for football as freshmen, and continued as they found themselves sharing other classes. This bond occurred due to Bill Hewlett’s friendship with Ed Porter, and Dave’s interest in radio. 

Dave Packard remembers that both he and Bill were interested in fishing and on a field trip to the Sierras to visit to one of the PG&E hydroelectric plants, namely the Big Creek Power System, they took that occasion to do some fishing as well!

Outdoor activity was again to play into their plans of recreation after graduation. They went to Colorado for a two week pack trip with one mule and covered the San Juan Mountains. They had a great time on that trip, until the night before they were supposed to come home. Bill had a bad toothache, so he decided to hike out while Dave stayed up at the camp. Dave remembers that it was quite a ways to travel with the horse and the pack and miscellaneous goods. Dave’s night at camp wasn’t really restful. Something out in the wilderness surrounding the camp was howling all night, and believing that it might be a mountain lion, he made sure the gun was next to his bed!

Hewlett meanwhile had walked out to the car, which was a long ways off, and went down to Durango. They had been camping for two weeks, and undoubtedly were sight to behold with their mangy looks and growth of beards! Bill finally found a dentist in town and upon examination it was found the tooth had died so the dentist relieved it. When Bill asked him what how much the bill was, the dentist looked at Bill, judged that his patient was probably poor, and asked if a dollar would be too much.

As time progressed, this common interest in the outdoors had a lot to do with Bill and Dave developing an even closer friendship. When Bill would visit Dave at General Electric in Schenectady, they would go canoeing and skiing. Dave yields superiority in the art of skiing to Bill, who Dave thought was more talented than he was.

Bill remembers those canoe trips! On one they almost got swamped up near Indian Lake when the wind came up. The other trip was up at Portage on the Fulton chain of lakes, where Bill went out and collected a bunch of fresh water clams. There was a big pot of them and they were so tough they couldn’t possibly eat them, and after cooking the clams with some potatoes, they threw away the clams and had clam chowder.

During many of these outdoor excursions, Dave remembers that Bill, Ed Porter, and he had talked about doing something on their own during their senior year. This was still during the great depression and there weren’t very many jobs around and they were very concerned about whether they would be able to find employment. 

Enter the scene, Dr. Frederick E. Terman

In the following, we will see the effects of Dr. Terman on Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. He was their teacher and friend, as well as functioning as a mentor and later business advisor. Bill and Dave both agree that Dr. Terman had a great deal to do with their development of a desire, "to do something on our own." 

Bill Hewlett met Fred Terman in his graduate year. He wanted to do some more graduate work, and because he had heard about Terman, who taught an excellent course in radio engineering, Bill undertook a graduate year filled with a lot of Fred’s courses. Bill admits that Terman's courses were the first formal radio education that he’d had.

Dave Packard became first acquainted with Fred Terman in his junior year when Dave had been going up to the ham radio station at that old engineering building where Fred Terman’s laboratory was just a few steps above the station. Many times Dave would see Fred Terman, who took a great interest in all of the students at that time. 

As it turns out, Dave did not know as much about Fred Terman, as Terman knew about him! Dr. Terman stopped Dave in the hall one day and chatted and it turned out that Terman knew all about Dave’s athletic activities and apparently he’d checked on how he had done in courses at Stanford. He asked Dave, if in his senior year, he would like to take his graduate course in radio engineering. This of course was an area that interested Dave very much! Bill Hewlett was also to take the course in his graduate year.

Dave Packard remembers an early lesson in private enterprise provided by Fred Terman: "I vividly remember visiting Charlie Litton, John Kaar, Heintz and Kauffman, Eitel-McCullough, and Philo Farnsworth who had a research laboratory in San Francisco and was working on a new television camera. These people in the local young radio enterprises were Fred Terman’s friends - they admired him greatly and they knew his students would help develop the competitive advantage of this young industry." (7)

Dave remembers that it was in Fred Terman's class that he first met Barney Oliver, who was later to be head of HP Labs. Barney had come up from Cal Tech (he was a junior at that time). Barney had already taken all the courses that one would normally require to graduate and he looked around and thought the course in radio engineering would be something of interest to him. Barney proposed this to Fred Terman. Dave recalls Fred telling him: "You can start out in the first few weeks of this course and we’ll have a mid-term" and then adding the challenge, Terman continued, "...if you can pass the mid-term then you can continue, but if you can’t pass the mid-term I’m going to have to ask you to drop out." This was a class of primarily graduate students, and who got the highest grade in the mid-term but Barney Oliver! Who got the highest grade in every other exam, but Barney Oliver! This gave Dave an indication of the kind of a fellow Oliver was.


Dave joins General Electric.

Dave’s job at General Electric did not start until February in 1935. He had some time after Bill and he had spent the summer together to do something useful that fall. Dave went up to the University of Colorado and Dave loved the area. Dave comments that, "It may have had something to do with my interest in our location in that part of the country." Hewlett-Packard was later to open a plant there.

Dave remembers, that they were still very much interested in figuring out how they could do something on their own. The University was going to put in a public address system and Dave put together a proposal to do this for them. He was not the winner of the bid and figures that they didn’t have enough faith in him, or perhaps the bid was too high. These early thoughts of joint projects indicated that Dave was pretty well committed to wanting to do something with Bill on their own even before he went east to G.E.

It was after graduation when Dave Packard went to work for General Electric. He joined the company on a test program where they took new graduates from engineering colleges around the country, which Dave remembers as being 50 or so, and placed them in various manufacturing departments in Schenectady and other plants. The new employees would produce equipment, perhaps electric motors and others worked on transformers. These items had to be tested before they were shipped to the customers, and these test departments were places to train the people who are new to the job. The procedure was that an employee would be assigned to various test departments, and the first assignment Dave had was in the refrigerator department where he tested defective refrigerators for Freon leaks and other problems. Dave found this work to be relatively uninteresting so he scouted around a little bit and looked at some other areas. He was able to get transferred down to the radio department, where they built radio transmitters and receivers.

What Dave was working on at that time were military communication sets of about 50 watts output. They also built some very large low frequency transmitters, in which the final amplifier stage was in a facility about as big as a room. Dave’s recollection was that the operating frequency of these transmitters were 15 KC or 30 KC. This frequency is called very low frequency, or VLF. These transmitters were used as the land based end of maritime communications, and sent messages to ships at sea. 

During that period, when Bill Hewlett was in Palo Alto and Dave Packard was in Schenectady, Fred Terman would make a trip east once or twice a year, and would usually go through Schenectady. He'd act as a message carrier, and tell Packard what Hewlett was doing, and vice versa. In a way, Fred was carrying personal impressions back and forth between these two young men who continued to nourish the idea that they would some day go into business together. They were corresponding with each other as well. (2)

Dave Packard’s next assignment at General Electric was in the vacuum tube engineering department where he spent the rest of his time working on Ignitrons. These tubes were mercury vapor rectifiers that had a controlled arc used in various industrial control circuits and spot welders.

According to Fred Terman, "In less than two years after Dave arrived at GE he was the senior author of an IRE paper announcing a new vacuum tube device-the GE version of the ignitron tube which immediately became a widely used product. He thus achieved a position of importance very quickly". (2)

Bill Hewlett finished his graduate year at Stanford, and then applied to MIT where he was accepted. This year resulted in Bill earning his Masters Degree. During this period Bill was able to go over and visit with Dave. Bill well remembers what he went through to get to Dave’s residence. Bill tells us, "I remember taking the bus to Albany... that shake rattle and roll operation that would go from Boston over to Schenectady..."

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During the many visits Bill made to Dave’s house, he met John Fluke who would later start Fluke Engineering, as well as Jim Wilcox and Bobby Wilson. Bill was impressed with the "...attic full of the most tremendous amount of equipment." Bill was impressed by the great time these three bachelors were having.

Dave Packard gives us some further background on Bobby Wilson, who was also a great amateur radio enthusiast. Bobby Wilson had gone to Yale and after he graduated from Yale he took a trip around the world with a Doctor Light in a private plane, Bob was the navigator and radio operator on this flight. 

John Fluke, Bobby Wilson and Dave Packard, during their employment at General Electric, haunted a site called "Building Number 97" where GE sent all of their defective equipment for disposal. Dave remembers that there was always a vast number of interesting items that were still useful to the person wishing to experiment in electronics. Dave recalls purchasing Pyrenol capacitors that had a nick in the case and were still usable for an independent project, but had not passed the quality control process for use in a General Electric product.

Aside: Pyrenol and Dykenol oil filled capacitors work well as the additive to the oil keeps them from breaking down with high voltages. Both of these additives contain massive amounts of PCB’s (carcinogen), and knowing what we all know now, none of us would want one, especially if it had a flaw in the sealed case!

This availability of bargains resulted in a full attic of parts and apparatus that Dave and his friends enjoyed!

Dave remembers the high powered transmitter from those bygone attic days: "When you pressed the key, the lights in the whole house would light up... whether they were turned on or not!"

Bill Hewlett also associated a lot with Bobby Wilson and John Fluke during World War II as Bobby and John were stationed in the Navy together. Bill was in the Signal Corps and they used to get together. Since all of their families were about the same age, he enjoyed his association with them.

Bill Hewlett spent a short stint in the Army following his days at MIT. After Bill was discharged from the Army in 1936 he found things weren’t much better in the world, due to the continuance of the depression. He had only one offer of a job but from Jensen Speaker in Chicago.

Fred Terman again enters the scene to help Bill out! Terman had inquired around and found a doctor in the local area who was interested in having someone build an electroencephalograph. Bill was employed to design this project. It was a 4 channel device to measure brain waves, patterned after one the doctor had seen back east. The recording surface was a drum which was about 8 feet long and about a foot and a half in diameter. Being a large recording surface, the device lended itself to lengthy sessions of observing brain waves. Although this was not, as Bill Hewlett put it was not, "...my kettle of fish"-meaning interest area, but he was proud that the electroencephalograph worked very well! 

Fred Terman tell us: "Hewlett studied at Stanford for a year after graduation, went to MIT for a master’s degree, then returned to Stanford and did some free-lance research, took some courses, and built the diathermy machine, and also a rather bulky recorder for brain waves wanted by a woman doctor connected with the Stanford Medical School." (2)

Fred Terman comments: "It was my impression that as a boy Bill had not previously worked much with mechanical things or made things with his own hands. At Stanford we had a small student shop in the radio laboratory, and Bill got to playing around in this shop during his graduate years. He was an unusually energetic fellow, who always had to be doing something extra to wear off his surplus steam, even while taking a full academic load. And he did this by making things in the shop. When he got something made and working, that was it, and he would quickly lose interest. For example, he was one of the early skiers, and he built himself a portable transceiver that worked off of batteries-to carry out on the ski range. He enjoyed making it, and took it out on one or two trips, but soon it was taken apart and the parts used for something else. He got his real satisfaction from making it and getting it to work."

"As I have said, my impression was that Bill hadn’t done much of this before, and was finding that making things was a lot of fun. At the beginning he wasn’t particularly skillful in either design or construction. I have said that he alone could create more disorder in the shop in one afternoon than all of the other fellows put together would create in a week. I know he hadn’t done much in radio before, because he used to take circuit diagrams from the magazine QST, and go over them laboriously in great detail. I can remember once he looked up with a broad smile and said to me with obvious satisfaction, 'Well, I just finished studying this diagram, and I’ve figured out what every component in it is supposed to be doing.'"

"In this period, when he was first building things, Bill’s designs were pretty primitive. But he is one of the few students I’ve ever had who, as one watched, rapidly acquired a feel for nice ways of making something, a clever way of doing it. Most of my students seemed either to have been born with this kind of talent or they lacked it-and those who lacked such skills at the start never seemed to get much better-except for Bill Hewlett. He acquired the flair through his own initiative and drive." (2)

The project was carried out in the upstairs radio engineering laboratory at Stanford, and this was to be an environment where Bill did many other projects. Bill remembers one time, during a productive work session he had spread out a little bit too much in the lab. Fred Terman had come around and told him that he had to get back into a much smaller space. Bill, acting as any other creative designer would have, became very indignant! Terman scolded him by comparing Bill to the physical gas laws, "... you’ll expand into whatever space is available and if you’re compressed you get hot."

Dave Packard also remembers that a little bit later, after they were working in their own laboratories that both of them used to get things spread out in a pretty vast area, and commented that, "... I think that was pretty natural..."

Dave Packard had met his wife Lucile at Stanford. She was a Delta Gamma. Her home was in San Francisco and although they were in separate parts of the country, they kept up an interest in each other. He went back to see her in 1937. In those days, at the salary he had, Dave concluded that he couldn’t afford to come out to San Francisco so she got on the train and came out to Schenectady all by herself and they were married. Dave Packard’s mother traveled to Schenectady and attended the ceremony on April 8, 1938.

Fred Terman and the 'Wide Grid Tube'

Fred Terman again pleasantly intervened in the future life of Hewlett-Packard and arranged for Dave to get a job back at Stanford. In a letter to C.V. Litton, dated June 1, 1938, Terman states, " I received the official authorization for the expenditures yesterday and am wiring Packard an offer of the assistantship." This telegram sent by Terman was to change Dave Packard's life! The newly married couple packed up and moved back to California in August 1938. (1)(8)

Fred Terman states: "Then, through an unusual chain of circumstances, my laboratory received a $1,000 gift - big money for those poverty stricken days. This gift was a by-product of the Sperry Gyroscope Company’s interest in the Klystron tube, and was to explore some side ideas. Packard would be ideal for this assignment in view of his experience at General Electric with vacuum tubes, so I asked Hewlett: ‘Do you think Dave would be interested in taking a leave of absence from GE to work on this project for nine months or so? We could pay him about $55 a month for nine months, and still have $500 for expenses. He could take a leave of absence from GE and so not burn his bridges behind him (remember there was a depression and good jobs were scarce), and decide for himself whether you are right in feeling you have an adequate basis for starting a company."

"Hewlett’s reaction was: 'I don’t know, but I can write and find out' I hope that letter was preserved, because on the basis of its contents Packard took a leave of absence and came out here. I saw the GE people a few months later, and they were very puzzled as to why Packard wanted to break his continuity with General Electric just to return to school, when his prospects in Schenectady were so bright!" (2)

After Dave returned to Stanford, Fred tells us: "Back at Stanford, Dave worked half time on the tube project, and half time on formal courses. He told me subsequently that after being back a few weeks he knew he would never return to GE." (2)

Dave Packard’s fellowship at Stanford, arranged by Fred Terman, involved research on an idea proposed by Russ Varian. This idea involved what was called a wide grid tube. The high frequency limit of vacuum tubes was determined by among other things, the transit time of the electrons from the cathode and the grid to the plate. Russ Varian’s concept, was to make the grid thick enough so that they would get a full cycle of transit time inside the grid, out of the field, and the electron would come out with the proper timing to add energy in the transit beyond. Indeed this was a ingenious idea. Work on this project took place off-campus at Charles Litton's Laboratory. (1)

Charles Litton was a very skilled machinist and craftsman as well as a good engineer. Litton's work pattern consisted of starting to work late in the day, and continuing until 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. This worked out very well with Dave’s schedule, because he could go to class in the day time, and after dinner he would go up and work with Charlie Litton until 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. This made it possible for Dave to build the friendship that both Hewlett and Packard were to enjoy with Litton for years to come. Dave gives Litton credit for help when Hewlett-Packard got its start. When Federal later decided that they were going to move east, Litton didn’t want to move, so he set up his own shop to manufacture tubes up in Redwood City. (1)

At the beginning of, what is often referred to by Dave as, the 'Thick Grid Tube Project', Charles Litton had reported to Russel Varian, with Dave Packard as Litton's assistant. Later, Dave Packard was to take more of a leadership role when Charles Litton received an offer to do work for ITT. Since it would have been a conflict of interest for Litton to have both projects ongoing, and extremely difficult as to which patentable ideas were derived from which project. In the winter quarter of 1939, the 'Wide Grid Tube Project' was moved From Litton's laboratory to the Stanford Communication Laboratory. (9)(10) 

Unfortunately they found, although Dave questioned some of the research methods, that there were other factors that took over and tended to be dominant. By April 27, 1939, the project was essentially over, as Fred Terman states in a letter to Professor J. Hugh Jackson, acting Comptroller for Stanford University, "...the initial wide grid idea has been abandoned in favor of other ideas that appeared more promising, and there is actually no work on the wide grid idea now being done." There were other techniques that made the high frequency triode more practical. For instance triodes could be made with very close spacing, such as the lighthouse tube developed at General Electric and used during World War II. (1)(10)

Aside: A post war tube development at Bell Laboratories was the Western Electric 416A Planar triode. This high frequency tube was also known as the Morton triode. It was named after its inventor, a famous engineer, Jack A. Morton. This tube was to become the heart of the TD-2 Transcontinental Microwave Relay System that provided not only long distance telephony, but brought network feeds to our local television stations to be re-transmitted to home viewers.

Since the advent of active synchronous communication satellites and the large land based fiber optic networks the TD-2 system has become obsolete.-Edward A. Sharpe

The outcome of this project with the largest impact for Dave Packard and the future company of Hewlett-Packard, was that Dave did this work up at 'Charlie' Litton’s shop. Charles Litton, in Dave’s opinion, was one of the really brilliant engineers. Litton had done work for the Federal Telegraph Company which became part of ITT and had been started by Cyril F. Elwell. Litton' major part through his years of association with the company was to devise a number of ways to get around patents on vacuum tubes.

Dave remembers Bill Hansen, Russ and Sig Varian and Ed Ginzton working on the Klystron over at the Stanford physics department. This close-knit group succeeded in building the first klystron that oscillated on August 19, 1937.

Aside: For more information on early klystron research at Stanford, be sure to read Ed Ginzton's excellent article, "The $100 Idea" in this issue. - Edward A. Sharpe

Bill Hewlett was there in the same vicinity because Fred Terman allowed him to use the laboratory for the construction work Bill was doing on the electroencephalogram. After completion of the equipment the funds ran out so he spent time taking some courses to further his education.

Bill and Dave both found that their association with Ed Ginzton, who eventually became head of Varian; Joe Pettit who went on to be Dean of Engineering at Stanford and later to be President of Georgia Tech; and others; to be fun, an interesting time and to be stimulating as well.

The Oscillator - The beginning.

A key event in this period at Stanford, was Bill’s involvement with the development of negative feedback there. Both Hewlett and Packard note these events as the genesis of Bill Hewlett’s world changing oscillator-the 200A.

The article by H.S. Black of Bell Laboratories on inverse feedback had greatly intrigued Fred Terman. He really fired up the class on everything that could be done, and Bill, like most young people, thought there’s a better way to accomplish the things discussed in class. Bill tried all kinds of experiments, some of them worked, so he continued on and built a Wien Bridge Oscillator.

One of the major problems was to find a method to stabilize the amplitude of the output from the oscillator. There was such a low 'Q' that the normal limiting means could not be used as they caused clipping. The secret turned out to be a simple light bulb acting as a non-linear element that was sensitive to amplitude by heat and you were able to stabilize the amplitude but not corrupt the wave form. 

Dave Packard credits Terman with simplifying the article written by Black on inverse feedback to the students. Black's article was fairly sophisticated and Terman had a great ability to simplify these equations and make them easy to work with. Dave remembers Terman wrote an article about negative feedback in which he had simplified some of these equations to the point so that even he could understand them!

The principle of inverse feedback was to play a role in so many of Hewlett and Packard’s other early instruments; such as the their model 300A Wave Analyzer.

Fred Terman explains: "To complete the requirements for an Engineer’s degree at Stanford, Bill had to prepare a thesis. At that time I had decided to devote an entire quarter of my graduate seminar to the subject of ‘negative feedback’ I had become interested in this then new technique because it seemed to have great potential for doing many useful things. I would report on some applications I had thought up on negative feedback, and the boys would read recent articles and report to each other on current developments. This seminar was just well started when a paper came out that looked interesting to me. It was by a man from General Radio and dealt with a fixed-frequency audio oscillator in which the frequency was controlled by a resistance-capacitance network, and was changed by means of push-buttons. Oscillations were obtained by an ingenious application of negative feedback."

"I was already interested in audio oscillators. This was the time of the Great Depression and we didn’t have money to buy apparatus. As a result we had been building our own oscillators."

"In thinking about the device described by General Radio, my reaction was that while this was an interesting idea, their spot-frequency oscillator was very limited in its usefulness. However, it appeared that one should be able to put in a variable broadcast tuning condenser in place of the various fixed condensers that GR cut in and out of the circuit to change frequency, and could thereby generate a frequency that was continuously variable. I suggested to Hewlett: 'Here’s an idea. Maybe you can develop it into something useful’"

"It was just a raw idea, with plenty of things to be worked out-such as a way to avoid generating a lot of distortion. And that’s where Bill made his first invention-he introduced a small incandescent lamp into the system, thereby providing a resistance that increased in value with the amplitude of the oscillations, but without introducing any non-linearity."

page 18 & 19

"Bill worked out all the details, and then built a nicely packaged prototype that he demonstrated at a convention here on the Pacific Coast. He felt he had something that was both useful and marketable. However, Packard was in the East starting a promising career there, and had married Lucile only a few months before. Prospects of a partnership did not look too bright." (2)

A new home for the innovators.

When Dave returned in the fall of 1938, Bill Hewlett found a house for Dave and Lucile. One of the prime requirements of the new place of residence was that it had a garage that could be used as a shop and also another place where Bill Hewlett could live as well. Dave and Lucile lived in the lower flat, Bill Hewlett lived in the cottage behind the house, and their landlady had the upper flat. The start of the tooling supply for the garage/shop was provided by Dave, who had collected a set of tools to use in the basement in Schenectady. Dave and Lucile brought the drill press and other assorted tools back out west in the trunk of their car.

Bill and Dave set up shop before school started, Ed Porter was working on air conditioning jobs up in the Sacramento Valley. Ed arranged to work with them to build control equipment for air conditioners, and they scratched around trying to find jobs.

Open for business!
Or, the T.I. Moseley harmonica story!

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard had a friend who was involved in a bowling alley in San Mateo. Bill and Dave's first consulting job was to help with a signaling device. 

One other early customer was T.I. Moseley, who Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard cite as one of the great promoters in early days.

To depict this scene from our story in better detail, we find in Jane Morgan's book, Electronics in the West, some good background information on the Dalmo Victor Company. This information is presented in condensed form here.

Tomlinson I. Moseley attended Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California where Moseley became the student foreman of the school’s excellently equipped machine shop. In 1921, when he was just 19, he established the Dalmo Manufacturing Company in San Francisco. This was a job shop where he built such things as permanent-wave machines, thermostats, and electric dental equipment, even an electric toothbrush. His customers found that the soft-spoken young machinist often had clever suggestions to improve their designs. His business thrived. Soon he was patenting and producing his own inventions.

During the years of World War II, Moseley’s company, now called the Dalmo Victor Corporation, moved to Belmont, on the San Francisco Peninsula. 

Dalmo Victor, developed the first, and became the leading manufacturer of airborne radar antennas during the war. As of 1966, when this information was current, Dalmo Victor was producing 90 percent of the nation’s submarine antennas and was preparing the communications antenna system for the first U.S. spaceship to the moon.

T.I. Moseley approached Bill and Dave for help. T.I.’s theory was that all harmonicas were made overseas so therefore there should be a great opportunity for someone to have an American made harmonica. T.I.’s question was, "How do you tune a harmonica?", and he came down to ask Bill and Dave to help him work out a device to tune harmonicas. What Bill and Dave determined was that the human ear is pretty sensitive to tonal changes in music and they would not be able to devise a system that would accomplish this tuning. Of course with today's technology the project would be easier.

One of the early engineering projects that the two engineers took on was the construction of a clock drive for the telescope at Lick Observatory using Thyratron tubes. The circuitry using these tubes would control a DC motor that tied into the clock to keep the telescope moving at the proper rate. A clock system is necessary for all good telescopes. As the earth rotates, the objects being viewed move from the telescope's field of view. The clock drive synchronizes the movement of the telescope with the movement of the earth's rotation, thus always keeping the viewed subject in the sky visible through the telescope.

Another consultation Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard had with T.I. Moseley was an electrical exercising device. The theory was that people should get more exercise, but it would be much easier if they could do it automatically. The idea was to find a frequency that would make your muscles move without hurting you and they experimented with that using T.I. Moseley’s wife as a subject!

Aside: I remember in about 1962, when in the fourth grade, my grandmother had a device, similar to this T.I. Moseley machine. It was called a Relaxisizor, and I wonder if this was an outgrowth of T.I.'s project. My father would never let me play around with this device, I didn’t really want any exercise, I merely wanted to tear it apart to see how the device worked and what was inside it! - Edward Sharpe.

ADD PHOTO

The 200 A audio oscillator, This product was Hewlett-Packard's first!. Photo courtesy HP Archives.

Dave remembers the first showing of the 200A at the 1938 IRE meeting in Portland, Oregon. Bill took the first engineering version of the 200A to the meeting and it generated a lot of interest with the engineers that were in attendance. Bill came home convinced that this was something that they needed to produce, so according to their recollections, they undertook to put models together around Christmas time. They took pictures of the oscillator in the living room sitting on the mantle by the fireplace. They also put together a set of specifications and a little sales pitch that Lucile typed out for them.

INSERT PHOTO

By today's standards, electronics in the 1930's was in a rather elementary state. An important part of the Model 200A oscillator, for example, was a light bulb used as an amplitude control device. Paint was baked onto early instrument panels in the Packards' kitchen oven. Photo courtesy HP Archives.

Fred Terman, who by this point in their career was undoubtedly starting to look like a guardian angel, furnished Bill and Dave with a list of potential customers. Still in the Christmas time frame or perhaps early in January, 1939, armed with the list Terman had given them, as well as some other names they had collected, they sent letters out. They were rewarded a few weeks later by receiving their first orders by return mail.

Dave remembers, "One order I remember had a check enclosed and I think that’s what convinced us that this was going to go."

And now... the really hard questions!

Looking back on the start of any manufacturing company some of the hardest decisions are, 'what do we name the company', 'what will the unit that has been manufactured be called?', and the other question, 'what price shall it be sold for?'

According to published Hewlett-Packard literature, the sequence of Hewlett before Packard was decided by a coin toss. It is further cited that the Model 200A was chosen as a model number, because a model number such as 100A or 1A might have denoted to the prospective buyer that this company was just brand new. 

Price of course was something that needed to be studied. A decision was reached between Bill and Dave, perhaps not based on extensive market studies as would take place today, but priced after the famous expansionist’s slogan of "54-40 or fight!" This slogan refers to 54 Degrees Latitude by 40 Degrees North Longitude, and was the boundary of the Oregon Territory. The Democratic Expansionists elected James K. Polk in 1844, and this slogan of "54-40 or fight" was used during his campaign for presidency. For further reading on this subject refer to a book on American history, and read under the topic of ‘The Oregon Question.’

The numbers used for the price ($54.40) were 'cute' but they found they really hadn’t really understood the economics very well and they raised the price. Fortunately, they learned very quickly that they could raise the price and since the 200A was a good value it sold. Even the slight amount that they raised the price enabled them to obtain more capital that made it possible for them to finance the company as they went along.

Bill Hewlett remembers a very important intermediate step. They received orders for the 200A oscillator and they didn’t really have any production facility, so they went down to see Johnny Karr. He was buying all their parts for them, and had been a classmate of theirs. Karr had a little shop in Palo Alto, so they asked John Karr if he wouldn’t like to make the 200A for Hewlett and Packard on contract basis. After thinking about it, Karr finally declined as he felt that he didn’t think that was a big enough business to fool around with! This put Hewlett and Packard into the manufacturing business and they built it themselves.

Bill Purdy, who was the manufacturer’s representative for Sprague, was an imaginative guy and realized that here was someone he could sell parts to. Instead of Bill and Dave getting 30% off from Karr, Purdy gave Hewlett and Packard about 60% off! This was the first time Bill and Dave were introduced to the existence of manufacturer’s pricing on components. Bill Hewlett cites Bill Purdy as one of the first parts vendors that they had contact with. Dave Packard comments that it turned out, Bill Purdy was very wise to offer them that discount because they ultimately became a very good customer. 

In addition, the fact that John Karr had turned them down for becoming Hewlett and Packard’s contract manufacturer, was to be helpful in the long run. Packard admits that it might have steered them in the wrong direction.

Their first partnership agreement had something in rough form signed about that time. Bill’s father-in-law, Mr. Lamson, helped them figure it all out, assisted by Dave Packard’s newly acquired knowledge received from a course in business law he had taken upon his return from work at General Electric. Dave also took a course at the Business School at Stanford in management accounting as well. He was glad he did, as both courses were very useful in later life. They both date the start of this partnership to be January 1, 1939.

Finances and patents.

The early days required everyone to work together as a team. Capital outlay during this period was for tools and components needed for manufacturing of the oscillator. Through this concept of teamwork, they found that anything that they envisioned became a reality!

In early 1939, Harold Buttner, who was the Vice President for Research and Development for ITT, helped Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard to acquire their United States patent on the 200A oscillator. Harold was intrigued with the oscillator and offered Hewlett and Packard $500 and his work on the U. S. patent in exchange for the foreign patent rights. By making this agreement, Hewlett-Packard doubled their capital and got the application for their first patent. Harold Buttner took a lot of interest in the company and subsequently was helpful in many other ways.

According to Dave Packard, they didn’t have any very serious financial problem that first year. As he recalls, their total sales in ’39 were a little over $5,000 and from the balance sheet at the end of the year, that they had about $500 on hand in cash and in the bank- and no liabilities!

Aside: The philosophy of running the company on a 'pay-as-you-go' basis, was the only logical method Hewlett and Packard saw to guarantee success. Many times companies forget to follow this wise business practice, over extend themselves, and thus face ruin as their liabilities vastly outweigh the assets. In the various businesses I have owned, I have always operated with the 'Pay-as-you-go' theory'. When the dip in the economics came, I would not make a lot of money, but I didn't go under either! -Edward Sharpe 

Bell Hewlett said of these early times, "Well, considering we weren’t taking anything out... it wasn’t surprising..."

Dave remembers that they we were able to keep things together on a financial basis but, as he recalls, they were working on some additional instruments, which consumed a certain amount of capital. They were also still doing some air conditioning control work with Ed Porter. Dave went to visit his folks in Colorado and left Bill the job of getting a control system finished and delivered. The job was for the Hotel Stockton and Bill stayed up all night to get the job finished and drove up the next day and installed it.

ADD PHOTO

Hewlett Packard's ad from Electronics, November 1939.

A plan for nationwide distribution
and the Disney Studios Oscillator sale.

Dave Packard believes the first ad for the 200A appeared in Electronics magazine. It was a small section that showed a picture of the 200A audio oscillator, the important characteristics, and the price. This brought in some inquiries from potential customers, including a man named Al Crossley. Al wrote in from Chicago and said that he represented several other instrument companies, and would they be interested in giving him sales representation responsibility for the mid-west?

page 20 & 21

Jumping back to 1938-1939, we find that representatives were to play a major part in the sale of 200B oscillators to Disney Studios. This sale is recognized in Hewlett-Packard history as one of the major landmark events. The person that seemed to tie everything together was William V. Stancil, the recently deceased president of Stancil Corporation. 

 

William V. Stancil, as depicted on the left in a drawing done by his granddaughter Julie from a 1930's photo, and on the right by a photo taken before his unfortunate death on July 1, 1991. Drawing and photo: Courtsey Sharon Custer

In a letter to Bill Hewlett, dated January 18, 1989, Stancil recounts the following experience:

"George Downs hurried to my house in Studio City to tell me about a terrific oscillator he had seen the day before in San Francisco, I believe it was during the 1938 IEEE Convention. George was a great admirer of Dr. Terman and that connection brought him to you and the oscillator." (Editors note - IEEE was called the IRE at this time)

"I had been working as a 'sound man' for M.G.M. and Goldwyn Studios but had left the studio work to establish a little development lab at home. In the early 30’s, George and I became close friends through Jim Lansing for whom George was chief engineer. Anyway, George drew a schematic of the oscillator and with his usual enthusiasm was ecstatic about your design."

"He thought I should get together with Norm Neely (who at that time was a factory rep for Lansing speakers). He also said Johnny Hawkins, a mutual friend, had been discussing the problem of finding audio oscillators to generate stable frequencies for the Disney film 'Fantasia' - Johnny was a consultant to Disney."

"George felt your oscillator would meet the requirements and he was certain if I could demonstrate to the Disney people there would be an order for nine oscillators if you had them in production."

"Neely came out to the house and I made the deal to work for Norm and he would be a rep for the new H.P. - I do not remember whether you and Dave knew Neely yet or whether George got you together."

"As planned, I got the order from Hawkins and the rest is history - I believe the nine were of your first production run."

"With my studio connections, I demonstrated and got some studio orders as well as from Les Bowman, chief engineer for KNX Radio and other radio stations. The only problem we had was the Gerard Hopkins capacitor. I remember it was made in Oakland and I sent word to you I thought there must be a more reliable 'condenser' at that time."

"I enjoyed working with Norman. He was a tireless worker, honest and did a terrific job. I learned a lot from him."

"I decided, however, to leave him to continue my pursuit of recording equipment as used in movie sound. I took out patents on synchronizing cameras and projectors, particularly for 16 mm home movies."

"Doug Shearer of M.G.M. and especially my former boss, Olin Dupy, helped me tremendously. Lin later retired from M.G.M. and came to my fledging company. Johnny Hawkins also used to drop by my office every month or so up through the 50’s. He was a great guy."

"... but I have always admired what you have done and how you have handled yourself. I have had the nagging feeling I should write to you some day and say so. Incidentally, too, the example you have set for entrepreneurs is far more dramatic and forceful then any of the M.B.A. classes and graduate studies offered in the classic schools of the country." (11)

As noted in the above letter, George Downs was very intrigued with Hewlett’s oscillator and was a good friend of Norm Neely. Both Hewlett and Packard remember that it was largely through George’s interest that they got acquainted with Norm Neely. Looking back on the history of the development of the company, Bill and Dave realize that their association with both Al Crossley and Norm Neely were very helpful because they had been in the electronics business and really knew marketing.

Norman Neely remembers the early days...

Norm Neely, on the 25th anniversary of Hewlett-Packard, sent a letter to be published in this anniversary issue of Measure Magazine. Below, reprinted is the text of this letter. From the its tone you will see that Hewlett-Packard and Neely had a great relationship.

I first met Dave and Bill when they came down to close the oscillator deal with Disney Studios. I’d been in business about six years. Most of our lines were instantaneous recording and other types of sound equipment, and the movie studios and radio stations represented a major market.

Anyway, a mutual friend brought Dave and Bill by my office, and later over dinner they asked me if I would be interested in being their first sales representative. A popularly-priced audio oscillator was badly needed at that time, and with their new circuitry I was sure we could make some sales.

A few weeks later I drove up to Palo Alto and we officially closed the deal over Dave and Lu’s dining room table. All our agreements were verbal, sealed with a handshake.

Selling was pretty tough back in the early days, and I felt active demonstrations were the answer. I remember staging what must have been the first road show in the electronics industry. We invited local radio station and movie studio sound engineers for a showing of the 210A square-wave generator in the auditorium of a talent school next door for our office on Hollywood Boulevard. Attendance was good and Dave and Bill put on the demonstration in person. I can still remember Dave going with me to a nearby Italian delicatessen for help select an interesting assortment of cheeses, salami, and Italian breads to serve with the cold beer we had stashed away in the office.

There are a great many episodes that stand out in my memory during these 25 very active and progressive years, but one, I believe, is particularly indicative of why it’s been so gratifying as well as productive to have been associated with HP.

Shortly after starting to represent HP, I received a commission in the mail for an oscillator sold to Stanford. Since I hadn’t been near the school for some time, I was puzzled. When I asked Dave about if he said that actually he had supplied the instrument, but that their agreement with me was to pay commissions on everything sold in my territory, and that was the way HP intended to do business.

NORMAN B. NEELY President, Neely Sales Division

Bud Hawkins of Walt Disney Studios became interested in Hewlett and Packard’s oscillator and Dave believes it was largely because of Norm Neely and George Downs, who’d been good friends with Bud Hawkins and had influenced him during an informal meeting of electronics people from industry. Dave believes this was called the "Radio Engineers Club."

Fred Terman cites, "With the oscillator, it was clear that they had something that would fly. You see, they built those first HP oscillators in Dave’s garage, and sold them for $55, whereas competitive equipment cost $200 to $600. Very soon their confidence was justified by a large order. The sound engineer for Walt Disney’s movie, Fantasia, saw the oscillator, recognized it as good, and bought eight of them at one crack. This convinced the boys they were in business to stay!" (2) 


Mickey gets an oscillator! 

One landmark in Hewlett-Packard’s history was the first sale of a quantity of oscillators to Disney Studios. This sale helped spread the name of Hewlett-Packard around the movie industry!

Bill remembers, "Yes, I think this was after we had met Neely... and one of Neely’s good friends was a fellow by the name of Bud Hawkins..."

J.A. Hawkins, an engineering graduate from Stanford, was the chief sound engineer for Disney Studios. The movie Fantasia being made at Disney planned to have eight sound tracks! In the flight of the bumblebee, Bill remembers that Disney planned to have the sound of the Bumble Bee come right out of the screen, go around the audience and go back in again. This scene, set to the music of 'The Flight of the Bumble Bee' that Bill spoke of was never implemented. Although this was an extremely expensive project due to high quality animation, the multiple sound tracks, and the quality of the sound, was something that had never been achieved prior to the making of Fantasia.

J.A. Hawkins wanted the oscillators to fit into a standard eight-inch high panel for a 19" rack mount, so for this job, the traditional cabinet was discarded. Another requirement was, J. A. Hawkins wanted the oscillator to go from 20 cycles to 20 Kc, whereas the 200A had gone from 35 cycles to 35 Kc. The original frequency range of the 200A was in the higher range due to the size of the variable capacitor-it wasn’t big enough and Hewlett and Packard didn’t want to use too large a resistance.

Components were changed and the oscillator met the specifications of what Disney wanted. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard had now two models of their oscillator and the 200B was christened. Another specification that Hawkins wanted changed was the numbering system on the frequency dial. 

The work for Disney Studios would set a precedent, because the relay-rack mount was to became one of the standards, and the range of the 200B, 20 cycles to 20 Kc, was considered to be the normal range of audio equipment. But they continued to manufacture the 200A since there were still some customers that wanted an oscillator higher in frequency than the 200B.

To better explain some of the movie sound systems improvement history at Disney Studios, we are happy to introduce Dave Smith at Disney archives who will tell us about the pioneering advances made at Disney Studios, as well as the history of stereo motion picture sound! Dave originally published this article under the name "Disney First With Stereo Sound", and it appeared in Disney Times Volume. 3, Sept. 1980 on page 2.

From the Archives by Dave Smith

Disney First With Stereo Sound

Walt Disney was responsible for many "firsts" during his movie career, but one which is frequently overlooked is the first application of stereophonic sound to motion pictures. "Moving sound has been added to moving pictures," reported Popular Science shortly after the release of FANTASIA in 1940. "Mr. Disney has made history," editorialized the New York Times. Now, 40 years after the release of the Disney animated classic, it is possible to realize what an important milestone that introduction of stereophonic sound was to the history of motion pictures.

Bell Laboratories had pioneered in the field of stereophonic sound by producing the first known stereo recordings of orchestral music In 1931 and 1932. These recordings featured Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Stokowski was one of the few orchestra conductors to take the trouble to learn about musical reproduction techniques. He knew that a relatively small number of people actually were able to attend live orchestral concerts, and he dreamed of techniques which could reproduce that concert sound in the home and in the movie theater.

Several years after their first recordings. Bell Laboratories perfected a system for recording sound in several tracks on a piece of film. It was Stokowski who used RCA "multiple channel recording: "for the first time in the 1937 Universal film ONE HUNDRED MEN AND A GIRL. Even though there was added clarity, the sound still emerged from only a single point behind the screen.

It was at this time that Stokowski and Walt Disney had discussions about Stokowski conducting the music for the Disney animated version of "The Sorcerer’s Apprentice." As production progressed, enthusiasm grew to such an extent that the project evolved into an entire "Concert Feature" consisting of eight separate animated segments set to the music of great composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Schubert. Because of Stokowski’s earlier stereo experiments, he naturally wanted the Disney film to enable the audience to believe it was actually at a live concert. "We knew," said Walt in an interview, "that music emerging from one speaker behind the screen sounds thin, tinkly, and strainy. We wanted to reproduce such beautiful masterpieces ... so that audiences would feel they were standing on the podium with Stokowski."

The name, Fantasound, was chosen for the new process. The recording, except for the "Sorcerer’s Apprentice" which had been recorded earlier, took place at the Philadelphia Academy of Music in April, 1939. According to Sound Department head, Herb Taylor, "The recording was done on eight channels. Six of them were arranged to get a well-separated pickup of violins, celli, basses, violas, brass, woodwinds, and tympani. A separate channel recorded a mix of the six channels and another channel recorded the complete orchestra with a distant pickup. A ninth channel was used to record a beat or metronome track to be used by the animators for timing their animation." 33 separate microphones were placed throughout the 110-member orchestra.

Back in California, the soundtracks were re-recorded onto three tracks (left, right, and center), with a separate tone control track. To show the film, a separate soundtrack film had to be run through a sound reproducing machine simultaneously with the picture. The major aspect of Fantasound was the use of loudspeakers around the auditorium. Thus in parts of the presentation, bells could be heard pealing from the back of the theaters and the "Ave Maria" pilgrims could be heard progressing from the back of the theater to the front. The switching on the auditorium speakers required extra diligence by the projectionist.

FANTASIA premiered at the Broadway Theater in New York, City on November 13, 1940. The theater had to be specially equipped for the presentation, at a cost of $85,000 with new projectors, sound reproducing machines, and loudspeakers. 36 speakers were installed behind the screen, with 54 others placed throughout the orchestra and balcony. Only a few other theaters in the country were similarly equipped before the scarcity of electronic equipment caused by the beginning of World War II called a halt to such installations. The inability of FANTASIA to be shown widely in its Fantasound version was one of the reasons why the film originally lost money and was cut drastically for its first general release.

Fantasound was certainly a pioneering process. It led, after more than a decade, to later stereophonic techniques perfected most notably in CinemaScope and Cinerama. The panoramic screens made a stereo system almost a necessity because audiences could notice if an actor was speaking at the far right of the screen and his voice was coming from the center. Cinerama, utilized a separate Soundtrack film, as did FANTASIA, but THE ROBE in CinemaScope (1953) was the first film in general release with composite stereo sound and picture. The Disney CinemaScope releases of this time, including 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, and LADY AND THE TRAMP utilized this composite magnetic stereophonic sound process.

When FANTASIA was re-released in 1956, the original soundtracks were transferred to magnetic film with a fourth track added for the auditorium speakers. Later re-releases were in a monaural version, until a new stereophonic version was made in 1977. It opened to record breaking audiences.

The New York Sun commented in a 1940 review; "The recording is superb. Although Mr. Disney sees to it that one’s attention is always focussed on the screen, that this is not simply a recorded concert, this sense of music swelling all around one, from every direction, an inescapable force, is a sensation not to be forgotten." Scientific American wondered whether Fantasound would create the same revolution in the motion picture industry, as sound had a little over a decade earlier. In 1941, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, recognizing the achievement, presented Walt and his associates a special Technical Academy Award for an "outstanding contribution to the advancement of the use of sound in motion pictures."

FANTASIA has long been accepted as a classic. But, because stereophonic sound is taken for granted today, few people who watch the film now realize that it was the first to bring stereo to the movies, and that it did so 40 years ago. -Dave Smith Archivist

page 22 & 23

A Disney employee speaks!

We were fortunate to make the acquaintance of Larry Salisbury, who spent some time at the Disney Studios. The following text is from a letter received by the museum.

Your editor Ed, asked me to remember an experience with HP equipment in the late 1930’s. Of course that is a long way back and my memory chips may not be as precise as they were then. During 1939 and the early 1940’s I worked as a multiplane camera operator for Walt Disney Productions. Under the leadman Card Walker (later to become president of the studio), I was able to attend an after work hours sound class sponsored by the studio.

This class was taught by Bill Cummings of Frank Wiggons Trade School. Bill being a"hands on guy" brought to class a bay of 8 oscillators. These were 8 of the 10 which were purchased to be used in the sound production of FANTASIA. They were beautifully handcrafted instruments. The output had low noise, frequency stability, low harmonics, and level stability making them perfect for their intended use. 

I changed careers and lost touch with the studio. Perhaps a year passed before I obtained tickets to the see FANTASIA in the Cartay Circle. This was the only theater equipped to show Fantasia in southern California. Attending was the thrill of a life time. The picture quality was suburb. The sound was a historical first. Particularly impressive were the scenes which started with music coming from the back of forest and then moved the audience through the forest with the music flowing around the audience and finally coming from the rear of the theater.

Disney, Hewlett and Packard were men of vision and their products touched all of us enriching our jobs and lives. Gentlemen, thank you.

Signed, Larry Salisbury

But, how many oscillators?

There is some discrepancy as to the total number of 200B oscillators that Disney owned. Larry Salisbury saw 8 oscillators in one rack, along with two others. According to the archivist at Hewlett-Packard, the first sale was for eight units. In a general letter from William Stancil about his part in the oscillator sale, he cites the sale of 9 oscillators to Disney Studios. Further study has uncovered the photograph shown below that shows a rack with 2 oscillators that was used on the editing equipment. There seems to be no two accounts that agree with each other, therefore research is continuing in this area!

add photo 

View of part of the editing equipment. Mr. Hawkins and Mr. Garity are shown. Note the rack of two 200B oscillators! One of these is probably shown in the modern rack with some of the other equipment intact in a newer rack. Journal of the Society of Motion Pictures Engineers Aug. 1941.

Aside: Near the completion of this article, on 9/28/91, I was fortunate to see the movie Fantasia. LeeAnn, knowing the work I had been doing on this article, alerted me to the fact it was showing here in town, and might not show again for the next ten years. Before I went in to the theatre to view the movie, I imagined that I had never heard stereo sound before. In this mind-set, I experienced Fantasia, and was awe-struck! By putting myself in the shoes of the folks that had viewed the movie when originally released in the larger theaters, I was able to experience what they had felt.

At least one of the first 200B's purchased by Walt Disney for "Fantasia" was still operating efficiently in the Hollywood sound studio in the early 1970's, and is seen as the instrument second from the top. "Fantasia" has seen revivals from time to time. There is to be a release on video tape September 1, 1991. Note the added meter in the front panel of the oscillator, this appears to be a modification. Note that the oscillator and several pieces in this rack have been taken from the rack in the old photo from the JSMPE. Photo courtesy Hewlett-Packard Measure December 1979.

Other avenues to explore.

Bill Hewlett remembers that electronics was limited to just a few fields. It was communications and entertainment, which really meant radio and phonograph, the motion pictures and geophysical work. Almost all of that industry in California during the early days existed in Los Angeles. Some examples were; the movie people and Bill remembers meeting the key people from Fox. Bill and Dave also went to United Geophysical which was run by Herb Hoover, Jr., and Bill remembers a chance meeting with Lee de Forest on that occasion, where de Forest had a laboratory in Los Angles. 

In the introduction to the Terman Papers at Stanford Special Collections, it is indicated that Herbert Hoover Jr. was a friend of Fred Terman, and that the two young lads explored amateur radio together. The introduction between Hewlett and Herbert Hoover Jr. most likely had been provided by Fred Terman.

Dave Packard remembers that Al Crossley was the first to be interested in their product. Crossley had a number of very important customers for them and Chicago and Los Angeles were the main markets in those early days.

In those early days they also got involved with Bruce Burlingame on the east coast. Bruce had been a colonel in the Signal Corps, which opened the door to Ft. Monmouth, as well as some of the other government activities.

Bill Hewlett remembers another entertaining experience. He remembers after going down to see Norm Neely, he attended a meeting of the Engineers’ Club. During the meeting a speaker got up and gave Bill a very flowery introduction, saying he’d known Bill for years and then said, "...now I’d like to introduce his friend Bill Packard."

There are two or three things that happened during this period that obviously had some effect on the future development of the company. Dave Packard remembers, the first being their involvement in negative feedback which was the basis of the majority of their early products. He considered that put them out in front of some of the other companies that they competed with at that time. He also recalls that they looked at General Radio as a model. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were later on to get acquainted with the General Radio people.




Incidents on Page Mill Road.

Things were picking up toward the end of 1939, and Hewlett and Packard had to hire somebody to help make some of the oscillators. Harvey Zieber was their first employee and they hired him before they moved out of the garage at 367 Addison Avenue. In the early spring of 1940, they moved to Tinker Bell shop on Page Mill Road, near El Camino. The facilities consisted of parts of the building partitioned off with an office in front and a shop in back. Helen Perry joined Hewlett-Packard as their first secretary during their early days on Page Mill, thus lightening Lucile's work load which had become overwhelming due to the success the company was experiencing. 

Dave likes to share their experiences with the Page Mill building. The building was not well protected from the flood waters there. He remembers when it rained, the water used to come down Page Mill Road and they had to go out and put sand bags in front of the door to keep the water from coming in!

Bill, remembering the building says, "right... roll up our pants and take off our shoes!" Another incident from the early Page Mill days was that they started baking equipment panels in Lucile’s oven. Of course the reader can imagine how this stunk-up the house, as the paint was drying under heat in an enclosed area.

Lucile Packard, who was by this time tired of the smell, prompted them to get their own oven. An old refrigerator unit was purchased because it had good insulation. What they did not realize though was that it was kapok insulation. What a surprise they had when they heated the oven! It got so hot one night that it caught fire, and fortunately someone driving down El Camino saw the flames coming up in the back of the building, called the fire department who came and extinguished the blaze. If this fire had not been caught in time, they may have lost the entire shop. Fortunately, the damage was minimal.

Aside: A common occurrence at the Southwest Museum of Electricity and Communications in Phoenix, when restoring Black pay telephones for display, was to bake them in Lee Ann Sharpe’s oven at our home thus causing the paint to bond tighter, and to dry faster! Due to the smell it created, paint baking was forcibly discontinued per her order! - Edward Sharpe

Several other people joined the company at that time. Dick Arms was hired from Karr Engineering and he was the first machinist at Hewlett-Packard. Harold Hance was then hired on as their first engineer, he later went to work for the Naval Research Laboratories and Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard have not heard from him since then.

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Ad from Electronics magazine, dated October 1940.

Landing planes in the fog...

Another project Dave remembers was a special signal generator for the ITT instrument landing system. Bill believes it contained a door-knob tube and it had seven separate crystal controlled frequencies.

Dave remembers that they ordered the crystals from General Electric and according to his memory, they were in metal tube cans about an inch in diameter and as long as a 6L6 tube. Something had happened and none of the crystals would work. Dave thought that they were going to have to buy some other crystals, but fortunately G.E. was able to replace them and they worked out all right.

Harold Buttner, who had helped Bill and Dave acquire their first patent also was very helpful on the ITT project. It seems that General Radio 

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had agreed to make the variable-frequency version of the equipment General Radio had quite some time doing it because it had FAA specifications and they wouldn’t have any part of the fixed-frequency version of the thing so, but Hewlett and Packard didn’t know any better, but took the job on.

This ITT job was the impetus to get Brunton Bauer on staff. They needed somebody to do that sort of engineering. Brunton Bauer had been working at Heintz and Kauffman and having FAA experience with similar type circuits, finished up the design that was needed for the ITT project.

Dave remembers that they delivered the finished job, but since the government has a billing process, they didn’t get paid until later. Hewlett-Packard's bank balance was getting very low, so he called up Harold Buttner and said "We need some money to meet the payroll next week." Harold got a check out to them the next day. Harold was a good friend to them, and was indeed one of the people who helped Hewlett-Packard progress to the point it is now.

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Bill Hewlett tests an audio oscillator. Photo courtesy of Hewlett-Packard Company.

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Dave Packard tests an audio oscillator. Photo courtesy of Hewlett-Packard Company.

Another project that Hewlett-Packard became involved with at the Navel Laboratory at Point Magu was a simulator for the Navy’s echo-sounding equipment, or, in other words underwater sound. This involved saw-tooth frequency variation versus time and as Dave remembers Bill did most of that work. Bill got a turn table and they wanted a delay so Bill made the delay by just putting another pickup that would move around the turn table, thus making it possible to simulate the distance on the sound recording.

Bill remembers that one of Norm Neely’s main accounts was Presto Line. Presto was a large maker of transcription record cutters that were used in broadcast stations across the nation, in much the same way a modern radio station would use a tape recorder for pre-recorded shows. The difference in the two techniques is the old fashioned method required the station to actually cut a record disk to be played back at a later time. 

Bill acquired the Presto recorder from Neely. He remembers, that by that time Harold Hance had moved over to that Naval Research Laboratory. Two people, Vern Knudtsen from UCLA, an acoustic engineer, and Carl Van Dyke, one of the principal engineers in crystal work, assisted Hewlett-Packard on the Navy echo sounding project. 

During this time period Dave remembers Hewlett-Packard receiving many requests to development a number of special instruments. The people working in the geophysical area always wanted equipment suited to a special frequency range, and caused the development of the lower-frequency version of the oscillator. Another new feature the geophysical people wanted sweep frequency, and as Dave describes it, "We made all kinds of mechanical monkey motions to turn the condenser with motors..." He continues on, "...I’m surprised they worked as well as they did but our customers seemed to be generally satisfied with them..."

Kenneth Cole, one of Hewlett-Packard’s customers, needed a clickless switch for an audiometer. This was a device used for hearing tests, and the switch had to have a click at a much lower level than the tone otherwise it would be heard and the test would be invalid. 

On the road again!

The first national showing of the Hewlett-Packard product line was in the Spring of 1941. Dave Packard went back to the IRE show. He took an oscillator, a wave analyzer-the 300A, a square wave generator and a vacuum-tube voltmeter. The entire display was in the ballroom of the Commodore Hotel and Dave sat at the Hewlett-Packard table that was about three feet by eight feet and accommodated all of the instruments in the lineup. Two important events of this trip were the customers Dave met at the show and the trip afterwards to Fort Monmouth with Bruce Burlingame. Dave was to meet many people there, including General Colton who was a friend of both Bruce Burlingame and Bill Hewlett. 

Dave then detoured over to General Electric. He arranged to stay with friends during all of these visits so he wouldn’t have any hotel bills to pay. He then continued on to Chicago, where he stayed with Bobby Wilson and visited some customers while he was there. That was Hewlett-Packard’s first exhibition in what was then the IRE and became later the IEEE. Hewlett-Packard went back every year thereafter! As the product line continued to grow, it got to be a very large exhibit!

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This page from a ledger book listing cash payments from 1938-41. You will note that Bill and Dave both drew modest salaries during 1940. Photo: courtesy HP Archives


In and out of the Army.

Bill, who held a reserve commission, was called to duty in the spring of 1941. Bill’s basic commission was in ordinance and had orders for McCord Field in Washington for Aviation Ordinance. It didn’t really make much sense for Bill to be in ordinance, so Dave wrote to Colonel Colton who was the head of the Signal Corps Laboratories at that time. As a result of that letter, his assignment was changed from the Ordinance to the Signal Corps. In June or July, Bill proceeded to the Signal Corps Laboratories at Fort Monmouth.

Unfortunately, having Bill away put a strain on the company and efforts were made to get him back to back to work in Palo Alto! Bill comments, "If we’d been a normal corporation, the corporation could have put in and said that I was an essential employee" Bill continues, "...but because we were a partnership it simply amounted to I as an individual telling the government that I was essential" which of course caused the government to turn a deaf ear to the issue. Dave wrote a letter to Colonel Colton and in September Bill was released from duty. On his way back to California, Bill Hewlett traveled through Texas and visited people involved in geophysical work. This face-to-face contact was very productive as Bill was able to find out what they really wanted. The end result of this effort was the development of the 200D, a low frequency oscillator that went down to 7 cycles.

A meeting with the General Radio folks.

By 1940, the young company had outgrown the garage and moved into the building which once housed in the Tinker Bell fix-it shop. Photo courtesy HP Archives

In the summer or fall of 1940, Hewlett-Packard had already moved down to the Tinker Bell shop. Fred Terman introduced Bill and Dave to Melville Eastham from General Radio and he came down and spent the afternoon there. Dave remembers that they all sat on benches out in the shop and Melville Eastham was very helpful and gave them a lot of good advice on how to run a company. Bill and Dave and the General Radio people were to be good friends for a long time.

The only exception that Dave ever remembered in the good will with General Radio, was with Harold Scott who also had a patent on an oscillator. Hewlett-Packard took a hard line that they were not infringing on it. Mr. Richmond became chairman of General Radio and since he was a financial man, didn’t think this argument made any sense. Hewlett-Packard and General Radio worked out a settlement that both parties could live with.

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This close up shows the sign on the Tinker Bell building. 

During this same time, Bill remembers, they had the little building behind what was Tinker Bell and they rapidly outgrew that building. Mr. Bell was doing their cabinet work, and built the cabinets for the Model 205 signal generator. Mr. Bell and his wife lived there, and since they didn’t need much space, Hewlett and Packard took the front half of the building on El Camino in late 1940 or early 1941. The floor plan was: Hewlett-Packard had the back building, Bell was in the middle, and Hewlett-Packard had the front section which was their assembly area. Later on, during World War II, Mr. Bell and his wife moved out and Hewlett Packard occupied the entire building. 


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Bill Hewlett (standing) and Dave Packard at the workbench during oscillator manufacture. Photo courtesy of Hewlett-Packard Company.

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ASIDE: Hewlett-Packard was wise to use General Radio as an example. Both companies had a reputation for quality!

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