Bill Hewlett (1913-2001)/Dave Packard (1912-1996)
Bill Hewlett (1913-2001)/Dave Packard (1912-1996)
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| Travelogue of Hewlett and Packard page 4 by Julie Newdoll
The Adventures of Hewlett and Packard Continue |
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Hewlett and Packard icon is the last known location of the hitchhiker. White balloons are cell tower locations, red balloons are actual GPS locations. We have started a fresh map for the second part of their journey. |
Sculpture by Jim Pallas |
| August 16: After hearing of the treatment Hewlett and Packard received at HP from a San Francisco Chronicle News Blog, Sun Microsystems calls Julie. It seems they did not like the ending to H and P's journey. Sun has decided to rescue our Hewlett and Packard hitchhikers! They send an email, "Sun would like to jump in and help William Hewlett and David Packard, after learning of the unfortunate ending to their adventurous hitchhiking journey in the Bay Area. We read that at the final stop of your living art project, the pair of traveling cut-outs were to be dropped off at their home – HP headquarters in Palo Alto. We were shocked to hear that no one at HP wanted to welcome back the namesakes of their company, known for their personal perseverance and inventive track records in technology. We would like to return the pair to the road, in search of HP's sense of humor and a new home for HP's legacy."
Sun Microsystems will be handed H and P tomorrow. They plan to put a new destination on their back. I am not sure where they will be sending them, but hopefully somewhere friendlier than HP. If you see them, please send photos and stories. I can't wait to see where they are going next! |
| August 17: Julie dropped off H and P at Sun headquarters in Menlo Park this morning. Have fun, guys! | ) |
| August 18: We get some photos from Sun. They have taken Hewlett and Packard for a tour of their campus. H and P had never been invited to see the inside of Sun before. Perhaps they will be offered a job?
Sun sent along some captions for their tour, in black. "Wow, check out these systems. We used to make really innovative things like this at HP back in the good old days." |
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| "Hmmm...a combination of storage with a server...BRILLIANT!" |
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| H&P having fun in the sun at Sun. |
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| "Now that Solaris is open source, we love it even more!" |
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| They tried to get some cash out to give to their old company, because they heard HP sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into a product many call 'Itanic'. Unfortunately, they didn't know their ATM number. |
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| Well, you know how these company tours are. I hope they took them out to a nice lunch afterward. I am told that they will be sent on an exciting adventure after this. When this is all over, I think Bill and Dave are going to need a vacation!
August 19: Julie's mom phones her to say that their Hewlett and Packard sculpture is on the front page of the San Jose Mercury. This is all very fine, but it seems that someone at HP objected to the fact that we charged $6,000 for our sculpture. Just so you don't think we artists are selfish, money-grubbing types rolling in cash, I just have to say that of that $6000, about half goes to the people that helped take them around for their adventure as part of a shares scheme Jim and his wife came up with, 10% will go to YLEM and the rest goes to recovering the costs of the project. If you want to help us out for this or future projects, you can make a donation by pressing a button on our YLEM front page or you can purchase our William Shockley or Lee de Forest hitchhikers by contacting August 25: Julie's mom phones again to tell her that a friend saw our story on T.V. Everyone gets their fifteen minutes of fame, as Andy Warhol would say. I imagine groupies following Harry's mobile home around, with Fred Terman inside (he is still out there on the Terman pages of this site). There is lots of press out there, and I have my own news column here. We are still waiting to hear where H and P are off to next. . . . |
| August 29: I received this photo from a Sun Microsystems representative that dropped Hewlett and Packard off on the Stanford Campus. I hear they have a list of destinations they would like to visit listed on their back in search of HP's "sense of humor". I also heard there are some nice sounding places, but you have to find Dave and Bill to read what they are. The sculptor, Jim, notes that H and P are posing with the Burghers of Calais by Rodin. Food for thought. | ) |
| What is their final destination? I do not know. They are tagged with special anti-theft tags from www.fineartregistry.com/ (FAR) to help ensure that they make it to their final destination in the end. Now they even have the signature of Scott McNealy on the back! If there is no particular final destination, perhaps they will go the way of the Gnome and I will be receiving pictures of them for the next year or so. However, they will run out of batteries in about three or four weeks. If they are in your possision after September 15, call us in case we have a new battery fund. I suggest not taking them on a plane, as there is a battery attached to a mobile phone inside, which might get them blown up by security, and get the passenger carrying them sealed off in an inquisition room. In any case, this could be a very long search. . . . |
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| August 31: . . .or, it could be a very short search. H and P moved a short distance today. I am not sure how they did it, as one of the GPS points appears to be 2,000 feet high. Perhaps they flew. In any case, they told me they were in the David Packard Electrical Engineering Building of Stanford University. "We made a homecoming of sorts when we reached the David Packard Electrical Engineering building on the Stanford campus today. We were electrical engineering students here, of course, and much more recently buildings were erected in our names. You could imagine that we are looking toward Hewlett's building across the plaza from Packard's, just like our offices used to be. We are actually quite happy here and a bit tired of traveling. Perhaps they will let us stay." |
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| September 1: We get a couple more photos from H and P courtesy of Bjoern. Bjoern told me they said, "Still at Stanford. We took a short stroll across the street to the Gates Computer Science building today and went on a tour of the labs. |
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| "We heard they have showers in the basement here so we may stay for a night."
What could they be standing in front of? Is this some sort of "rack" in the basement? What goes on in the Gates building in the dead of night? |
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| September 13: Hewlett and Packard have disappeared. We noticed they went up to San Francisco for the night a few days ago and then returned to Stanford. No pictures, though. Maybe they went to a party where no one had a camera? Anyway, they were very close to finding a final home. Then, a couple of nights ago, at midnight, we stopped getting a signal. Were they stowed away somewhere that a signal could not get out? Is it a coincidence that their signal stopped being sent when they disappeared? We do not know. Perhaps we never will. If you know where they are, please write or phone exhibits __at__ ylem.org (650) 591 7999.
Perhaps they will show up at the Stanford Home game on September 16. Wouldn't that be great? Dave played football for Stanford and Bill loved to follow how the team was doing. I can see them come riding in to the stadium on the shoulders of the players, the crowd cheering. . . . We can only hope. |
| September 18: Hurray! Bill and Dave were sited at the Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing at Stanford. In fact, the Associate Director, John Aney, was kind enough to phone me and promise to keep them entertained until someone could go and get them. He wrote:
"Dave and Bill are happily resting in the offices of the Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing at Stanford. AIM sounds like something Terman would have liked, as well. |
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| At this point, the wandering adventures of Bill and Dave are over. HP's sense of humor was never officially found, but after reading "The HP Way", our engineer suspects it may have been at Agilent. Dave and Bill were too happy at Stanford to stray very far in search of it. They have been informed that they are welcome to stay at Stanford indefinitely, if they like. This is up to Sun. Hewlett and Packard have a few similar offers, so we will see where they end up. I will be sure to post it here. In any case, I feel very happy that they are in good hands and will certainly end up somewhere that they are appreciated. Nice to have been a part of your lives, guys. It has been a fabulous ride!
December 21: Good news! The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose would like to make their museum the permanent home for our hitchhikers. The only hitch is, they need to raise the funds. They are looking for corporate sponsors to help purchase them and make a new exhibit which features them. Sun Microsystems was the first corporation to step up to the plate for the cause. They have donated Hewlett and Packard to The Tech! |
| “After being shunned by HP officials, Sun rescued us back in August and now has found us a more welcoming home at the Tech.” |
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| H & P posing with Dr. Peter Friess, President, The Tech Museum of Innovation. Sun donated H & P to The Tech on December 19th. The museum is hoping to mount an exhibit of all the Silicon Valley icon sculptures and is seeking benefactors for the other legends such as Gordon Moore, Frederick Terman and William Shockley. |
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| “Is that Scott McNealy's handprint up there? After our tour of Sun, we're convinced it's a company that embodies the kind of innovation we once championed at HP.” |
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| H & P talk about the joys of Java with the next generation of Silicon Valley engineers and entrepreneurs. |
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| Ah, the rivalry continues. At least H and P had a happy ending. We hope for the same for the other hitchhikers. Thanks for reading, everyone! Perhaps you can go and visit H and P at The Tech when their new exhibit is in place, or perhaps even before. I hear they like just hanging around the place. |
| Page reference links http://www.stanford.edu/group/AIM http://www.netvalley.com/archives/mirrors/terman.html http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/96/960326packard.html http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/26/hp_photos/ http://www.fineartregistry.com/ http://www.ylem.org/ http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/15312857.htm |
Go to HP Travelogue page 1 2 3 4 |
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Copyright © 2006 Julie Newdoll, Jim Pallas, Mike Mosher, Mario Wolczko
