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Hewlett-Packard Historical Archives Destroyed in Santa Rosa Fires
Keysight Technologies damage from the fire in Santa Rosa, Calif. October 25, 2017.
Credit: Kent Porter / The Press Democrat
When deadly flames incinerated hundreds of homes in Santa Rosa, Calif. earlier this month, they also destroyed irreplaceable papers and correspondence held nearby and once belonging to the founders of Silicon Valley's first technology company, Hewlett-Packard.
The fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard, the tech pioneers who in 1938 formed an electronics company in a Palo Alto garage with $538 in cash.
More than 100 boxes of the two men's writings, correspondence, speeches, and other items were contained in one of two modular buildings that burned to the ground at the Fountaingrove headquarters of Keysight Technologies. Keysight, an electronics measurement company, traces its roots to HP and acquired the archives in 2014 when its business was split from Agilent Technologies — itself an HP spinoff.
"A huge piece of American business history is gone," said Brad Whitworth, who had been an HP international affairs manager with oversight of the archives three decades ago.
From The Press Democrat
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