Fires destroy part of Hewlett-Packard archives
SANTA ROSA, Calif. — California’s deadly wildfires destroyed much of an archive from tech pioneers William Hewlett and David Packard, such as a decades-old memo in which Hewlett proposes designing a calculator that can fit in his pocket, authorities involved with the archives say.
The more than 100 boxes of letters and other materials from the early days of Hewlett-Packard, now called HP, were stored in two modular buildings at the Santa Rosa offices of Keysight Technologies, an electronics measurement company that acquired the historical trove through a series of spinoffs, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported .
The two modular buildings burned to the ground in this month’s wildfires , which killed 43 people and destroyed more than 7,000 homes and other structures. The rest of Keysight’s campus, including its permanent buildings, survived with minimal damage, Ron Nersesian, the company’s chief executive, told the newspaper.
Packard and Hewlett pioneered California’s tech industry when they started an electronics firm in a Palo Alto garage with $538 in cash.