The HP Story: Part Three

epic extravaganza on the Hewlett Packard story. Okay, and it's again if you are just joining us. A couple of guys named Dave and Bill started late on tech stuff. Uh. A couple of guys named Dave and Bill started company in a garage in Palo Alto, California for eight dollars and a drill press. Yes, no kidding, They really did that, and then basically built it up into a powerhouse of electronic electronical electrical engineering feats of master. They were very

suburbian kill suburbian, Yes, I totally checked over that. Anyway, They made all sorts of really cool stuff that that helped other companies build their businesses. They made a lot of electrical engineering, measurement tools, oscillators, um frequency device, all kinds of stuff that you or I would probably never lay hands on about. Yeah. Yeah, we're talking about stuff that behind the scenes is very important, but to the consumer is mostly incomprehensible. It started in thirty nine, made

its way through the forties and fifties and grew exponentially. Um. And also they began to move into other fields medical technology, computers in the sixties, Yes, and computers. And when we were talking about computers in our last episode, we were talking about how they were computers. They were there too, how people compute things. Yeah, they're talking about business, business computers, research computers, that sort of thing, not something again for

the consumer. We're talking about computers that are the size of say a person's desk, not not a desktop, large calculators. But um uh. Now we're getting into the eighties. And the reason why we decided to stop our last podcast at nineteen seventy nine is because in nineteen eighty that's when HP launched its very first personal computer for for the personal computer market, right before they released a very large calculator that got called at the first personal computer,

but it was a scientific calculator. It wasn't a device meant to run programs and have an operating system and all that kind of stuff. Right, it's not a computer. It is a computer, literally, but it is not a computer in what we in the twenty first century consider a computer. Um so in marketing terms, that's what they had called it. But yeah, this this is when we're getting into the time of real um of modern personal computers.

So nineteen eight launches the HP eight five and it had input output ports that allowed it to connect to other computers and also to various electronic instruments. So uh not again not necessarily something for the average consumer, but we're slowly moving that way. Now in nineteen eight one we get yet another calculator. So I expect Mr Plette will dance around the room and squeel like a little joyful I like calculators. Apparently you do. It's the HP

twelve C. It's a business calculator. Yeah, that the twelve The funny thing about the twelve C is now that this device was introduced in they still sell them. Uh They're they're tiny devices. About the sizes we would expect a pocket calculator to be now, um, but it was designed to be a financial calculator. Um. So this is kind of kind of interesting because again HP had been was started as a company that made electric electronic testing equipment.

So now they are really moving like making a dedicated push into other areas of business and trying to reach out to other business customers who might want their products. Because again, if you've listened to our previous podcast on HP, you know that one of the foundation, uh parts of their philosophy is that you have to continue to grow as a business or you perish. And the best and the best part is it had a gold tone, so you knew it was good. Um. Two, they introduced HP

seventy handheld computer. It's actually a mobile computing device and uh, you know, it's kind of interesting it if you look at it today. I mean, granted, it looks bulkier than what we think of as a mobile computer now, but HP really had they were ahead of their time, really, but they had really predicted the whole mobile computing UM movement. Although at this point movement see what because they're mobile but although at this point the they're much more primitive

than the ones we use today. The HP seventy five C, however, even had input output drive so you can connect it to a printer or a digital cassette drive. Remember digital cassettes. These are not not like disks. You actually stored things on tape magnetically. But yeah, it was. It was ten inches long, about twenty five point four centimeters um by five inches by one inch, so it was only you know,

two point five four centimeters thick. It was. It was glad I have that memorized, because that's about the only metric conversion I have memorized. It was a bit larger than uh, your typical calculator at that point, forty eight k of RAM sixteen k ram. You know. It ran basic and visit calc and and you could use it as a clock or an alarm for appointments only cost nine when Mickey's big hand is on the digital one. Anyway.

So in nineteen two they also HP introduced within the company itself, an electronic mail system where you could send messages to other HP employees. So oh and yeah, no, that's right. Okay, I was like, what but the electronic mail was all internal, It wasn't this wasn't something Whearing an HP pioneered email. Email actually had existed for a little while and other research facilities, but this was It

was a pretty big move for a company to do that. Now. Granted, HP at this point is a very large company that's continued to expands, got more than fifty employees, so it was very important that they developed a way to communicate between different departments and within departments because it's getting too large to just rely on paper all the time. Yeah, and frankly, it's inconvenient to staple notes to people's foreheads

as they walk by. Yeah. I have had many people talk to me about my habit of doing that now, and I'm just pointing it out. In AP two, they also introduced the HP nine thousand, Ah, the HP nine thousands. It was a main frame computer, but a desktop main frame. Now when what when you hear the term mainframe computer, what you're supposed to think about is a computer that's so large it fills up an entire room. Yeah, I

think of specifically of the digital vacts yeah vas. Yeah, so you're talking about these enormous computing machines that uh that you know, you'd open up a door and you're looking at a computer. That's pretty much what these things look like. Now. The HP nine thousand was a departure from that. It was a computer that had mainframe capabilities, one that was just as powerful to say, a supercomputer

from the nineteen sixties, but it could it on a desktop. Now, this is a really good illustration of a an observation made by um Uh, an Intel co founder. We're of course referring to Moore's law here, and Moore's law is really an observation. If you've listened to our podcast, you've heard us talk about it a number of times quote

unquote law. But the observation essentially is that about every two years or so, and the time changes depending upon when you look at this law, about every two years, the number of discrete elements that can be fit upon

a square inch of silicon waffer Uh doubles. So what that means to the layman is that the number of transistors on a microprocessor tends to double every two years, which means that you can cram more transistors onto the same space as you could two years ago, and thus devices can get smaller while maintaining a level of power. So by two it was possible to build a machine that fit on a desktop that would have the same amount of power as in nineteen sixties super computer super

which is you know, that's a pretty big deal. Now. Of course, today the computers that you run out and buy in the store have more power to them than some of those supercomputers did back in the nineteen sixties. You know, you could buy a netbook that has more power than some of those supercomputers. But but you know, this was this was a good illustration of that that that observation. You can buy a smartphone. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. But that's the thing about Moore's law, right,

I mean, it's exponential growth. So if if More's law were not correct, then we wouldn't be able to do

those things. But it's so far held out to be true, although of course, every single year that passes someone predicts will be the final year for Moore's law to be able to hold true, because we keep thinking we're going to run into some sort of fundamental obstacle that will prevent us from continuing, and yet engineers figure out a way around it because they're crafty that and because they want I think, haven't we established that they generally want

to try to. It's a self fulfilling prophecy when you try to make it work, right, Yeah, it becomes one of those things where you know, engineers in general and even companies in particular, will dedicate a lot of resources to keep it going because you never I don't think anyone wants to reach the point where they say, we've reached the end of of what Moore's Law has predicted.

We cannot we cannot continue at that pace. It doesn't necessarily mean when Moore's Law does come to an end, whenever that may be, it doesn't necessarily mean that we that progress will stop. It may just slow down significantly. Anyway, we got way off track there. They introduced the HP one fifty touch screen computer. Yes, which you know, if you think about it, the touch screen PC. Yeah, and

we're still talking about I mean, think about this. HP is has managed to launch a mobile device much earlier than mobile computing takes off. They launched this touch screen computer way before we start seeing a lot of these touch screen interfaces come out, really ahead of its time. The the HP one also had a keyboard, so it wasn't exclusively touch screen, but you could select items on the screen by touching them, so again kind of predicting

the craze. Now granted almost three decades too early, but but it's still pretty impressive. And oh you uh, you didn't mention one thing about Mr Hewlett, Which are you going with the awards? Yes, I did not. I did not include the awards. I didn't well, we don't have as many as uh in our Texas Instruments podcast. But he did get the National Medal of Science. But you were going to mention the big ants actually two of them,

both coming from the the Graphic Recording Division. Yeah. Um, specifically, I was going to talk about the thermal ink jet printer. Uh, that's that's the year that HP introduced that idea. And um, I guess that's where the name think jet comes from. Think jet comes from thermal ink jet. And this was a new way of printing. Now, the major kind of printer that was on the market before this was a

dot matrix printer. Those things were loud, very loud. When that when they were printing you, you pretty much couldn't hear yourself think. You had to sort of train yourself to ignore the root noises. Um, as well as the crunchy noises of the paper getting caught up in spokes and things. It was not always pleasant. That's all right. I had a daisy wheel even better. Whack whack, black Whackum.

So they do have. Earlier in the podcast we were talking about, how about how HP has descriptions and photos of these items on their history part of their website. Um, it's interesting they have a they have a sound sample of the think jet, and it's funny because the literature surrounding it talks about how much quieter it is. It's not what you would call quiet swissbur quiet. It's quieter er. Yeah, it's not as loud. How about that? So, yeah, that

was a big deal, you said, You said too. Was there a second part to that that you wanted to talk about? That? That's all I jotted down. Oh well yeah, there was another big printing advance right about the same time, the laser jet. Oh, the laser jet. Yes, I didn't have that down. Yeah, the laser I think jet and laser jet were both both came out in the same year. Um. Now, the thing jet was thing that you might would be obviously well maybe not obviously, but a less expensive um device.

But the laser jet uh started in three thousand, five hundred dollars, and it was a completely different kind of printing. I mean, this was now talk about quiet. This is gonna be a lot quieter than that ink jet printer. Um. And this is also the point where uh, you know, computers are becoming more common sites in offices and and and they will be in homes uh in very very

short period of time. Is also the same year that the mac uh, well, the Macintosh, I should say, the Macintosh computer premiered in nineteen eight four, and we had the IBM PC. Yeah, IBMPC had been out for a while, and of course you know Apple had some computers help for a few years before the Macintosh, and even the Commodore sixty four, which debuted in nineteen eight two. So

the personal computer is starting to gain ground, yep. And so you know you might have a think jet and a in a home because it's a less expensive printer. Still a lot of dot Matrix and Daisy Wheel out there, but laser chat was what you might see in an office, and uh, talk about a popular product. Of course, the line still exists today. Um. It was uh in eight four two, I believe that's when HP made Fortunes list of the hundred Best Companies to Work for, number seven

on that list. So it's another indication that HP took taking care of its employees very seriously. Do you have anything for eighty seven, because my next thing is, oh, well, I had had eighty six when HP introduced the RISK architecture Reduced Instruction Set computing, which is, it's a it's a type of architecture for micro processor for many computers. UM, it's typically less expensive than other architectures. It's also, according to many people, a better UH way of computing than SISK,

which is it's it's counterpart. But um, that's a that goes back to the power PC versus Intel days. When you can hear that you can get so much, you can get some some debate going upon. It's funny because when you when you bring this up to computer engineers and computer scientists, you can get to some pretty crazy debates on the various benefits and um and problems with various kinds of architecture. Most of us just say, I just want my computer to go fast and do things

I don't I don't care how it does that. Oh and we didn't talk about the integral computer they were released in all in one. I didn't find it very integral on the podcast, and it anyway, it's also rather heavy. Yeah. They also came out with a number of different UH scientific calculators, like the HP eight teen C and thirty two S eight nine. I gave up on the calculators. There's a lot of them. I couldn't I couldn't keep up, but it was it was a lucrative line of business

for me. And in eight seven they began their hardware recycling program, which is again ahead of its time. Yeah. One of those things again about HP. If you've listened to the previous podcast, HP wanting to be a good corporate citizen, so trying to do responsible things and not uh, you know, not contribute too much to pollution and other problems.

In fact, there are a lot of initiatives that HP launched that help make it a at least put it in light of as a company that is UH is concerned about the environment, including things like tracking greenhouse gases that that happened later on UH. Oh, I'm sorry, you've got a point here, just a small point that Jonathan thought was long dead and you might have to if you listen to the parts one and two. UM. In in the first part we talked about the birthplace of HP.

That UM after UH Mr Hewlett and Mr Packard moved out of the house where the garage was, they left it to other owners and tenants over the years, but HP decided that, uh the garage was significant UM and probably I think because of something that you mentioned before too. Other companies looked to HP as a leader and they started, I think the the mythos of the whole uh starting

a tech company in your garage thing. I mean, it's been done by others, Apple and Google, you mentioned Microsoft, Origin Games started out of a garage well, and and many other businesses have too. But I think HP decided at that point that, look, other people have done this so much that we want to we want to keep track of this. So they decided to have the that the garage would be on the list of historic landmarks.

So they actually started pursuing landmark status and in the Palo al To Historic Resource His board named the garage a city landmark. Yeah. We'll get into more of that in a little bit, YEA, because I've got eighty eight and the next part of that story happens in eighty nine. Yea, in eighty seven, California did the same. I have it, I have California naming it a California Historical Landmark in nine. Okay, my timeline said August. See it's sometimes sometimes you run

into little differences and along these timelines. But yeah, it's it's actually now a national landmark. Yes, originally it was Palo Alto, then California now national. Uh. Yeah, this little bit shack where HB started and you can see it on Google Maps if you'd like. Yeah, we HP launched the desk Jet printer series, which was its first mass

market ink jet. So um, they've started to bring the costs of manufactured down so they can bring down the cost of the actual units and start selling them to to uh to consumers because before it was you know, kind of like the early adopters who were getting hold of these early think jet printers. But it wasn't until we the desk Jet series that started to fall into the range of the average consumer because you know, early adopters tend to have a lot more money to play

with because it's expensive to be an early adopter. Um and at this point in the company is doing quite well. The revenues are now at nine point eight billion and they have more than eighty seven thousand employees. That's kind of large. Yeah, so you've got the historical landmark thing happening either in eight seven or eighty nine, or perhaps both, because you know, well I got my information from HP timelines, so they have it listed as both. I would I

would think that eighty nine is is it? Because I had it on that one? So interesting? And so they did get a plaque in eighty nine that that declared the garage the birthplace of Silicon Valley. There is a monument there with a sandstone rock in the front yard. Um, and uh, just well we can get to that later. But they they you can actually go by and see the plaque. It is there at the at the place

you can't go into the garage. I can imagine just these people constantly coming out of that house yelling, get off my lawn, you nerds. That'll come up later, Okay. So in uh, the desk Chet, yeah, which was a color printer, so this is the early days for color printers for the consumer market. Um. They also created the HP l X, which was a palm top PC I love how these these terms get bandied about. Yeah, yeah, I love that every single product is well, not every

single most of the products are HP. Couple of numbers, a couple of letters. Yeah, still so confusing. Like if you if you started rattling them off to me at this point, even though we've just talked about them, I'd be like, Um, is that a calculator? No, silly, that was an awful leader. John Young retires. Now if you were listening to our last podcast, you would have heard about John Young becoming the president and CEO of HP. Uh. So he retires, and a man named Lou Platt becomes

the new president and CEO. UH, and then in Packard finally retires. Hewlett had retired several years earlier, but Packard retires ninety three as chairman. So Platt then becomes the new chairman. So he's the president, CEO, and chairman of the board. Now this is when that becomes sort of common for the leader of HP. From that point forward, you start to see a lot of the HP leaders

assume all three of those roles. So, um, now we finally have it where both of the founders have stepped back from the company UH and then the company introduces the Omnibook three hundred Done. Done. It was a portable computer. Weighed three pounds, not that heavy really, um and kind of a predecessor for the laptops that we'd see later on. I mean I had a folding form factor just like a laptop dead uh and you know not you know, almost like a predecessor to netbooks in a way. Yeah,

because again it was supposed to be extremely portable. I would like to point something out here. Um, at this point, I would argue that HP still sees itself as a business to business company. They're making products for primarily for businesses. Um. Yeah, they do have their eyes on the consumer. They're selling products to consumers, but I think they still sort of uh, they're making a lot of these products for people who

are using their stuff in companies. Uh. And that's that's a wise move on their part because that's a lucrative market for them. Um. But they will they will be branching out in the near future. I just wanted to point that out. Um. They did begin work on sixty four bit microprocessor architecture with Intel. Yeah. Yeah, so they partner with Intel to work on this. Uh, this architecture design for sixty four bit microprocessors. If you listen to our thirty two bit versus sixty four bit podcast and

you know more about that. If you haven't, will wait, welcome back. The HP then produces the world's brightest led for no reason. No, that's not that's not true. Well, remember we talked about HP Labs UM, and that was a division of the company created decades before to come up with new and innovative uses of technology. So I think that was that had a lot to do it. But they found UM applications in a number of things like message signs and cars and traffic signals, so that

that's one of those things. And uh, this is when we started seeing the office yet you know, the all in one facts copier, printer, the latte machine, except maybe not with the latte machine. Um, but that was the what hpiece as is the world's first of those mass market all in ones, yeah, which you know you see a lot of those today. Yeah, very compact ones now too. Yeah, but that that was aimed at the home office, right, Yeah.

The idea being that you know, if if you only you only have so much space, and most people don't have space to have a printer, a copier, and a VEX machine altogether. That would be much easier to conserve that space and have a one all in one unit, which is what HP did. They created the Pavilion PC. And that's really when HP went after the consumer market. Yeah, and that's what that that's sort of what I meant before they were they weren't really aiming for that market.

They were they were just sort of hitting it anywhere. So now they're going, hey, all you home people, we make stuff for you to listen hear home Chicken, Home Chicken. You need yourself a computer. And then there was the p d A that they released in ninety eight, the Jornada, Yes, the Jornada Personal Digital Assistant for those of you who don't remember what PDAs are. Look at a smartphone, take

the phone part out. Um reduced its ability to run apps dramatically, and that's a p d A. Also, just jumping back really quickly, because there's a couple of things we need to talk about. That's when Packard published the HP Way, right, and we talked about the HP Way before. Yeah, And that was something that was inside the company, was company information about how basically a plan, how they wanted

the business to be run kind of a guideline. And then so he publishes a book that really expands upon that and also just talks about the experiences of creating this company. But in nineties six he passes away. So Packard, the one of the co founders of Hewlett Packard, passes away in UH. So in n lou Platt retires, and here's where we get into some thorny controversy and problems with Hewlett Packard. Really uh you know, Packard had just

passed away. And then three years later ninety nine, lou Platt retires and the new president and CEO elected to HP is Carly Fiorina. Now is also when again this goes back to our very first episode. They used to make electronic measuring equipment UM. HP decides to divest itself of that and it spun off a company that handled it the measurement equipment, chemical analysis and the medical stuff.

Remember they acquired a medical company a long long time ago, and they decided that they would become its own company, and now that company is called Agilant Technologies UM. But the divestiture UH finished in the year two thousand. Meanwhile, to to jump back over to Fiorina for a minute.

Her tenure at HP is one of those that is sort of steeped in I don't know, controversy is probably not the right word, but there there's been some pretty heavy criticism directed towards Greena and her the way she led HP. Now, I want to say, first of all, she had an incredible burden placed on her because one

of the one of the co founders had passed away. Um, she was looking at the at a company that was very much accustomed to doing things a very particular way, and perhaps in her mind she felt that this was a sign of complacency and that in order to really be a successful company they were going to have to try and break out and do new things that were that you know, maybe we're outside the comfort zone of the company, but you can argue that, you know, some

of the best leaders in industry had that same sort of idea. You know, you can't. I think some of the criticism is is well founded, and I think some of the criticism might be a little exaggerated. However, there are certain results that you cannot argue with, and one of those is that during Fiorina's tenure at HP, the

stock price dropped dramatically. UM. Now, it's high was around seventy four dollars before Fiorina took over, but by the time she did take over, it was right around UM fifty one dollars or so, and by the time she left it was around twenty one dollars. Yeah, it was

a dramatic drop. That's why when I made that joke in the previous podcast about if you could travel through time, you would want to go back and buy the HP stock when it launched at sixteen dollars a share and sell it in ninety nine when it was at its highest point, just before UM lou Platte decided to retire. UM. So we'll talk a little bit more about the decisions

that Fiorina made. She actually uh ended up on a list made by Conde Nasta's portfolio UH that was called the twenty worst American CEOs of all time, which is that's an ouch right there. Um. She had come from A T and T and Lucent Technologies, by the way, that's where she was before she came over to HP. And that was another big point of contention, was that she was the first CEO to come from outside of HP. She had not been working there and then grown from within.

She was brought from outside. She actually ended up prevailing over an internal candidate to become the president and CEO and um and and this sort of marks the beginning of a very uncertain time and hps uh existence which extends all the way up to present day. So UM so that we'll go more into what happens with Fiorina

in the next few years. Um and, do you have anything for two thousand, Well, I was just going to tell im, I was just going to point out that, uh, Fiorina took over with the spinoff of Agulant Technologies, um HP was getting away from some of the core businesses that made it the company that it it is now.

And that was one of the things that Dave Packard had set aside as important to stick with what you know and and find ways that the company can make contributions, but at the same time reach out and and grow. And one on the one hand, you say, well, this has now grown so big that it really belongs as its own company. It's we obviously let's see a lot of growth and computing, personal computing, business computing. Uh, we're

doing well here. Let's let's stick with it and get rid of these guys and let them be their own thing. But at the same time, you go, well, at the same you know, you've you've got this. It's strong and it could survive and be a thriving part of of HP. So they kind of the company kind of broke with tradition, both in hiring as a CEO who was not brought up within HP culture and in spinning off some of

its core from the founding of the company core businesses. Yeah, and things just got a little things get worse from there on. Out two one, Hewlett passes away, So now both the founders have passed away. Uh. And meanwhile the company creates HP Services, which is a consulting branch. It's meant to provide support and solutions for mostly enterprises, big businesses when they're looking for things like network support and that kind of stuff. Um, so it's it's again another

departure from hpce core. They're not you know, they're mainly a products company, not services company. And then that year HP stocks fall really sharply. But to be fair, the entire market in two thousand one suffered quite a bit, especially after September eleven, the terrorist attacks on September eleven.

Took a had had far reaching implications in multiple avenues including, uh, the world of finance, and so the technology g industry took a big hit in two thousand one, and of course HP had its own uh personal corporate tragedy as well with the passing of Bill HEWITTT. Yeah, so it was it was a difficult ear for the it was.

And in two thousand two, HP acquired a company called Indigo, which is help it's digital publishing branch, which again you're you know, it seemed kind of interesting compared to what HP had been doing up to that point. Uh. And they also started getting into in a big way. They start conducting research and development in the field of nanotechnology UM. And then there was a merger that one of the most heavily criticized mergers, Like it's right up there with

with A O. L and Time Warner. As far as the criticisms, now, I would argue that Time has been kinder to this merger than some of the other ones we've heard about it in the past. But the initial remarks at the short term implications of this merger, we're not good, but I'm dancing around it. But HP merged with Compact to become this mega PC company. And UH, there were a lot of people, a lot of industry analysts,

a lot of shareholders. UH, there were people of the the children of the founders who objected to this merger, said that this was a bad idea, that it was going to cost the company too much money, that it just didn't make any sense. And UH as a result, the stock price you don't dip down again, and Fiorina ended up getting even more criticism directed toward her for

this merger. Now and in two thousand eleven, at least the early part of two thousand eleven, the stocks for HP had improved quite a bit, back up to pretty much the the era before Fiorina took a UH. The second half of two thousand eleven is a totally different story. We'll get into that. But but the the improvement of the stock prices as well as the revenues generated through this merger have sort of played out in such a way that the murder doesn't look like it was such

a bad idea. It was just it was a long it was a long play. It wasn't a short term gain thing. So it may be that some of that criticism was not completely warranted. Now, I am not a financial genius by any stretch of the imagination, or else I would be um listening to podcasts and not doing them. But but so I can't really comment on this because you know, I honestly I don't have enough insight into it.

I can only mentioned about the analysts. But moving on to two thousand four, By that time, HP was number eleven on the Fortune five lists. So clearly the company's doing something right, right yep. And that's that's when it UH went all in on the consumer market. To um. They had a whole bunch of new consumer devices including uh uh flat panel TVs, plasma and l C D televisions, both of them, and the HP Digital Entertainment Center, and they partnered with Apple Apple iPod from HP. I don't

remember that at all. I remember it, and I remember it making my eyes bug out and going really, yeah, I have no memory of this, and uh I didn't mention something for two thousand, But it's all right because I can roll it in here. And two thousand HP had finally purchased the house at three sixty seven Addison Avenue, and in two thousand four they announced that they would be renovating it and rehabilitating the house, garage and the shed,

um which it has successfully done. It basically as a company owned property, which they are basically keeping up and they say it looks very much as it did back in when Mr Hewlett and Mr Packard started the company, which I think is again I think it's kind of cool that they're showing that devotion to their history and tradition. It was definitely in dire need of rehabilitation because in the late seventies it got into this whole punk glam thing and it just fell in with the wrong crowd.

So I'm glad it finally got the help it needed. Uh, and UM moving on. In two thousand five, HP acquired a company called cy Text Vision, which, Yeah, that was a company that made printers that could print in super wide formats, so like really wide posters or banners or signs, billboards, billboards. Yeah, we're talking about like stuff that you know when you

look out there and you see something that's a huge poster. Uh, that's sort of the business this company's And if you've ever been to an industry convention or driven by one, UM, that's the sort of stuff we're talking about, Like I think of things like C, E S and E three. I mean, you just see these banners everywhere, and it's companies like cy Text Vision that print those up and UH. February two thousand five was when FI Arena was forced to resign from Hewlett Packer. The board of directors had

had enough. They felt that the stock price was really just not where they wanted it to be. The shareholders were unhappy. The merger with Compact at that point was not paying off, but it was again early days for that, and so they decided to Um to give her the boot. She would later get into politics. She actually ran for a Senate seat in California and did not win that,

but Um still very active in the political arena. Meanwhile, UH for the for a short time, Bob Weyman acted as the interim CEO, but then they hired on Mark Heard to become the president and CEO, and in the following year in two six, he also becomes the chairman. So again we have a president, CEO, and chairman all in one, all those roles held by one person. Two thousand and six was a big year. They HP acquired

Voodoo PC. Yeah, it's voodoo, Yeah, exactly. They produced high end gaming rigs, so kind of like alien ware, you know, that sort of thing like the super Fast, which was purchased by Dell. So trying to really reach out to the consumer market to an even greater extent than it had already. They also acquired a company called Mercury Interactive Corporation, which was a business software company. Uh. And then there was a story that broke in newsweek. Do you remember

this story about the spying, the internal spying at HP. Okay, so the story said that that the HP chairwoman, Patricia Dunn, this is before heard, has become the chairman, but that Patricia Dunn had hired a security team because there were stories leaking out from the executive level at HP, and they were reaching the media, primarily they were reaching c net. And one of those stories was about um Fiorina. The board being unhappy with Fiorina and wanting to get rid

of her. This was before she was forced to resign, and HP at the time denied that there were any such talks, and then about a week later, Fiorina was fired and uh, Meanwhile, Patricia Dunne was very upset that such sensitive information was leaking, and so she hired a security team to kind of find out what was going on, and allegedly the security team consisted of private investigators who

were spying on HP employees and on journalists. So there was a big scandal that broke because of this spying, saying, you know, the HP board doesn't trust HP employees and that this mistrust is fundamentally against the principles that HP was founded upon, and that you know, it just was unconscionable and done would actually were sign That's when Mark Heard became the chairman UH and the state of California actually filed charges against Patricia Dunn, but the case was

later dismissed so it never went to trial. UH. And then two thousand seven, HP introduces the touch Smart PC, which was an all in one computer with a touch screen interface. Again two thousand seven being a little early for that. We're just starting to see these kind of touch screen computers start to gain widespread acceptance in well, started in the late part of eleven and continuing into twelve,

especially when we start seeing things like Windows eight. UH, the preview, I guess you could say, of what it is eight, which really seems to be geared towards that kind of interface. Um, whether or not that will end up being successful, we can't say because it's too early for us yet. But also in two thousand seven, HP did something really really interesting with ink jet technology. Yeah. Now I think this is funny because they're using inkject technology,

but they've already spun off their medical unit. But as it turns out, they're they're using printers to achieve a medical purpose, basically by creating a method of drug delivery through a skin patch that can be printed with medicine using a printer, so it can release these controlled dosages to the skin and there's no need for an injection or to take a pill or anything like that. Right, So, very creative use of that technology. I thought that was

pretty interesting. Uh. In two thousand and eight, they introduced the HP thirty three Mini Note PC, which is a sort of like a kind of like a netbook, a very lightweight mobile computing device. They also acquired a company called Electronic Data Systems or e d S, which is a technology services company. Can I finish? Can I finish Ross Perro's company? Oh? Yeah? Uh so, hey, kids, ask your parents who Ross Pero was? So Russ Perro was

Trump before Trump was Trump. And in two thousand nine, of course, it acquired a three comm Yeah, which this is the one that made you scratch your head. Yeah, so three com um that would be an interesting story in and of itself. By by two thousand nine, basically it was a networking um company, basically network switching technology. Yeah,

they had been involved in modems. They hadn't been involved in all kinds of u uh really kind of innovative stuff handheld technology in the nineties, uh, internet enabled stuff. And then they started having some problems and uh they got into a different Some of their other background businesses became the ones that they were successful for, so they really faded from the public life. But um HP picked him up. They said, you know, we want this technology, and so far um as far as I know, it

hasn't been a bad deal for them. The next one was more troublesome. Yeah, we'll get into that in a second. But in two thousand nine they also introduced a web connected home printer we're just starting to see more of today now as well, where you you can create a printer. You know, you have a printer at home, and you can even if you're on the road, you can print stuff to your home printer just by connecting through the right website. So that acquisition of Graphic Recording Company back

in uh, you know, decades before. Yeah, the HP is a big name in printers. So on August six, Mark Heard resigns. He's actually forced to resign by the board of directors. Now, this is a case that is pretty odd. Originally there were allegations of sexual harassment brought up against Mark Hurd. Uh. The investigation that could that followed seemed to say there were no actual implications of sexual harassment. However, there were some cases of Mark Heard having uh, some

expenses improperly build to HP. So it was it was you know, it was definitely something that Mark Hurd should not have done. If he was improperly billing stuff to HP, then that that's the problem. You know, it needs to be resolved. But there were people who wondered if the board pushing him out of the company was in fact a bad decision. Many people suggested that Mark Herd was a very good leader. He had made a terrible mistake that needed to be addressed, but that he should not

have been forced out of his position. One of those was Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, who who was also a personal friend of Park Hurd, who then brought Mark Herd over to become co president of Oracle. You know, Larry Ellison is always afraid to speak his mind and shy, shy man who was not known for being incredibly blunt, um not at all. So after Mark hard left CFO, Kathy les Jack stepped in as an interim CEO until

Leo Apotoker becomes the CEO and president. Now Leo Apotoker, of course we'll talk about well, we might as well just go right into twenty and Shelley. Yeah. Even last year, as of the recording of this podcast, another incredibly rough

year for HP. Back in March, Leo Podka announced that there was going to be a big move to cloud based services within HP and also said that web os the um because oh I mention in HP bought Palm, Yes, the former manufacturer of p d A S and the Palm Pre and other smartphones and later smartphones and uh that company of course we've talked about before, but if you haven't heard the podcast, in a nutshell as time wore on their operating system for their smartphones fell out

of favor. It was it was dated. Um. Yes, the palm os was dated and it really was better suited for PDAs than smartphones. Um, especially once with newer technology and other newer devices were showing it up. So they introduced this new operating system and new phones that would run on it. But by that point it was kind of too late and they started to founder. So HP picked him up in two thousand ten. Yeah, and we

all thought, oh, they found somebody will save them. You know, we thought, first maybe HP is going to get into the smartphone market, but HP said, no, we're not really interested in that. We're looking at putting web os on tablets and other computers. But then, like the tablets never seemed to come to market. The problem well, there were many problems, and one of them being that Apple had such a strong hold on the tablet market that it was you know, you really need to make something special

if you wanted to go up against Apple. Uh. And then in the smartphone market you had Apple and Android really getting a lock on that consumer smartphone market. So it was a tough place for HP two b in even with the resources it had. So in March h Apple taker said that the webOS operating system would be included on every HP computer going forward and you could boot either in Windows or in web Os, which had in my head. Yeah, So this was March. Now in April,

there was a report that leaked. There's that leak problem again. Um, it was an earnings report that that showed that the earnings HP had in the previous quarter were far below what they anticipated and uh, and so HP was actually forced to hold its earnings meeting early because of that leak report. That was sort of a damage control sort of thing. And then shortly thereafter, appar taker takes the stage and says that you know, they're gonna stop supporting

webOS to start stop developing it. Yeah, just gonna set that aside. It's they're no longer going to focus on

developing webOS. So which was troubling because they had come out with their own tablet, the touchpad, and the touchpad was highly anticipated and all of a sudden, you know, it's supposed to release and now they're saying that it's not gonna yes, so they get they said they're going to back off of web Os, and they reveal that the he is considering spinning off its personal computer division to make it its own company, so divesting itself of

personal computers. And again this this made people question what is going on over at HP. Now, remember, historically HP had very little to do with the consumer market, but in the last decade or so, it's really become a big player in the consumer space. So to get out of that just seemed complete, especially after the merger with Compact,

right because Compact was all about consumer electronics too. It seemed counterintuitive and people were really wondering what was going on over at HP, including as it turns out, the board of directors, who did not really care for the backlash that came out after Appo Taker had said these things UM, and so the board pushed Appo Taker out of the role, so he left, and then they looked to a new person to come in and lead the company, which was Meg Whitman, who was formerly the CEO of eBay.

And that's where we stand today. Meg Whitman is currently the president and CEO of of HP. UM. They are not, as far as we know, spinning off their personal computer business. They they said back in October that they had reconsidered this and decided that was a poor decision. Actually, they said that the many of the things said on August

eighteenth were bad decisions. That's what meg women said. Um So in October they announced that that's not going away, and in December they said the company said that they were no longer going to just abandon web os. Rather they were going to turn webOS over to the open source community as well as continued development of web os. It's on their own, so they were also going to contribute to web os as development. They weren't just gonna, you know, throw it out in the wild and drive

away really fast. They were supposed to. Supposedly, they're going to continue working on it. So they've reversed a lot of their decisions. Now, whether or not that will be enough to convince people that HP is kind of refound its way, it's no longer sort of floundering around. That remains to be seen. Yes, because if you look from the time essentially when Packard passed away, moving forward, the company seems to have really kind of just it's had

some rough spots, you know. It's it's not that the company has completely lost its identity. I don't mean to suggest that. I just mean to say that it looks like once the founders were no longer an integral part of running this company, uh, things got a little shaky.

It's hard when a company loses its um, its founder, partially because the founders um belief system has worked into the company to the point where Hewlett Packard I think really exhibited uh Dave and Bill's d n A as far as what they really thought of as a good place to work in, a good place to come up with new ideas and um, you know, when you have somebody new come in, they have their own concept and right and and a lot of people want to uh put their own mark on a company and say, well,

I want this to be I want HP in my years to be remembered for what I did with the company and not what Mr Hewlett and Mr Packard did back when they were in charge. Should accomplished for some of those yes, not necessarily the way they want to do, But I think that's that's part of it. As I think, um, you know, now, I'm I don't mean to read minds, but I uh, I think that that's that that figures into it. You know, I want to want it to be special when I'm there, not just you know, business

as usual, right. Um, So yeah, it's been an interesting ride, and uh it'll be very interesting to see what has in store with HP, um and see where they go

from here. Uh. As we record this, it's the friday before I fly off to the Consumer Electronics Show CES of Las Vegas, and I am very curious to see what HP's presence is going to be like out there, and to kind of get a look around and just kind of get an idea here what the chatter is on the show floor, and see if it's more of a an optimistic discussion, um than it has been in

years past. Uh. You know, one one holds out hope because you know, this is a company that has a very long history and it's uh, you know, even in its rough patches, it's it's been an important part of Silicon Valley. Uh. One other thing I was going to mention I should have mentioned it during the Fiorina era. Um. You know, we had talked about how HP had really

been about dedicated about taking care of its employees. That was one of the major criticisms directed towards Fiorina, and that there were massive layoffs during her tenure as the presidency.

More than thirty thousand people lost their jobs during her her time at HP, So you know, that's that's pretty stark indicator that the people who have come into HP after the founders may not have had the same philosophy, right heart, So hopefully that has changed, and we'll just keep our eyes on the company and see what happens

from here on out. Meanwhile, if any of you have suggestions for topics that we should talk about on tech Stuff, whether that's another company, whether it's innovative person within the tech community, or perhaps just some other topic in general, let us know. You can drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter. Our handle is tech Stuff H. S W and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,

Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you