David Green - The Hewlett-Packard of the last half of the 20th Century was an amazing international mix of technology and culture and people, with product development and sales facilities all around the world. It was magical, and rewarding, and enjoyable---the friendships, the accomplishments, the stunning benefits to humanity. Our HP Memoir archives here include several authors who worked and managed the UK-Scotland operations, Hugh Walker, John Wastle, Ray Smelek and several others. Now we have another personal journey through a highly successful HP division which dominated the technology and performance of the international telecommunications business of those times.

John Campbell - When Bill and Dave decided to move the oscilloscope division to Colorado Springs, everyone knew that the 1000 pound Gorilla in the room, Tektronix, enjoyed the same scope market dominance that HP commanded in most of the instrument business. The CSprings team ingenuity would be tested from the start, and they rolled out the HP 120 and 130 scopes which satisfied a profitable gap in the Tek line. From there, the decades of HP, then Agilent, then Keysight saw the Scope Division dominate that product line. It was those clever project teams and ingenious product designers like John Campbell who exploited the new technologies and HP's breadth of knowledge to meet the digital world of communications and computing and more. How do you rank a 4-channel scope with 110 GHz performance? Wow! Yes, that's giga.

Jeff Thomas - Bill and Dave recognized that project teams and all the corporate workforce, with stressful time schedules, needed to balance minds at work with family and other aspects of life, and was one of the Corporate Community Objectives. This led to many company-sponsored affinity groups with a variety of extracurricular activities; hiking, hunting, bowling teams, baseball league, crafts, music. Of course, many employees pursued their own hobbies and passions and causes. One of the most creative of these is Jeff Thomas, with his prodigious output of fanciful sculptures and creative arts. Some technological, some pure whimsy, this HPMemoir is a delightful walk-through art space.

Kenneth Jessen -- In all these 42 previous HP Memoirs, we've never published a history on the startup of the Loveland Division. Yet, for the last 20 years, that book was already written. Ken Jessen transferred to Loveland in 1965, and began a lifetime trail of HISTORICAL WRITING including 22 Colorado History books. Ken details the exceptional leadership vision to integrate the armies of new employees into a functioning company, as well as social and community clubs; bowling, ball teams, maybe a dozen in all. It also describes the continuing transfer of products and the new Engineering creations, culminating in HP's blockbuster line of desktop computers.

Richard W. Anderson - Some observers of those HP managers who changed jobs every few years, used the title-Marketing or R&D Mercenaries. When you read this captivating life history you will agree that Dick moved a lot contributing in FIVE major assignments, and showing great leadership in both product and business strategies. Experience counted in a world of complex technologies and budget realities, finding the right product directions which exploited the rapid advance of the globe's scientific knowledge, and calling on his learned experience. Dick's life outside HP is equally charming, he and his wife contributed greatly to community causes, major education benefactions, and personal efforts of taking in young children who were in personal need, even in their later years. I salute all people stepping up like that.

Norm Tarowsky - Based on his long career in semiconductors, Norm compiled his management advice into his THE BOOK OF NORMAN. You will find that his Book Advice speaks to the work culture of our well-known THE HP WAY. But Norm's Book is, in fact, a HOW TO... book on what practical steps you need to do to make The HP Way work in your project teams. Think of THE HP WAY as the Objective, which a work group wants to achieve to offer an efficient and effective and employee-friendly work culture. He reveals the individual actions and personnel steps which will lead to a friendly, yet powerful work culture. This wisdom comes from his Timeline of Work Assignments in a variety of job functions, here and overseas.

Bill Terry - Some of the best insights we can gain of the Hewlett Packard Work Culture in the High-Tech Second Half of the 20th Century is in the Oral Histories of some of the key players. When Bill Terry sat down with PR Manager Dave Kirby in the mid-1990s he delivered 250 pages of transcribed and enjoyable memories of his long and distinguished career, 1958 to 1995. Bill joined HP in the "Class of '58" which resulted from an initiative of Bill and Dave to recruit a team of MBAs and Engineers to grow and replace the HP management team which had developed out of WWII. Bill was in the middle of the 1960 Sales Rep buyout, running the Scope Division and Computer Group, and finally the Electronic Products Group. Read on

Barbara Waugh - What would you expect to happen when you turn loose a woman with a PhD in Psychology and Organizational Behavior, a Masters in Theology, Comparative Literature, and German, who harbors a revolutionary history and mindset, give her the title of Personnel Manager of HP Labs, and wait to see what happens in the preeminent advanced high-tech research lab of the mid-1990s? What do you suppose her added value will be to those 900 brilliant nerds? How will she impact the thinking and LISTENING of the crucial job of setting business and technology and empowerment strategies? Well, you're going to have to read her book, The Soul in the Computer, to find out. It hits you like a mystery, and finding that with every page, you're trying to imagine how they went about finding the Soul of HP?

Jay Coleman - What if your first job at HP was to regularly interact with the Founders, Dave and Bill, and the other Leaders; Young, Platt, Carly, and Hurd, to prepare employee news magazine stories, which stimulate, inform, educate, motivate, and otherwise communicate common values and vision? With occasional controversial issues? And the first BIG project was to plan and organize a 1989 world-wide celebration of the 50th Anniversary of HP's founding, "A Day in the Life of Hewlett-Packard," with results from 17 student photojurnalists from seven countries who shot more than 300 rolls of film (remember film?) and produced more than 11,000 images. Jay provides a long compilation of significant Measure issues with URL links to access those memories, and covers his years after Measure, with other crucial work.

Hugh Walker - HP was almost always expanding, opening new cities in the US and in about 1960, putting a new facility in Germany. This followed Bill Hewlett's internationalist vision, and gave a trade balance to increasing sales revenues in Europe. This comprehensive book compiles the 40-year life-cycle of the Scotland plant from its founding at Bedford, near London first, then Queensferry. It instilled the HP Way of management into a decidedly class society. Sadly, in 2010 its excellent industrial life of the HP Communications Test Product line was transferred and the plant-closing decision made by far-off management.

Steve Fossi - Come with us as newly-hired Steve experiences the growth of the Radio Frequency and Microwave product lines as HP expanded to Santa Rosa in 1970, spawned new measurement technologies and astounded the world with powerful and unique instrumentation. See the industry bubble that developed at the end of the 20th Century and hobbled the new Agilent corporate spinoff in the early 2000s. Watch as Steve, now in management, struggles with Automatic Systems consolidation and the new Agilent leaders grow new industrial and aerospace customer groups with innovative custom automation. All done within the rules of The HP Way.

Paul_Stoft - Working for the dominant Barney Oliver in HP Labs was one way of getting overlooked in recognizing significant contributions to Hewlett Packard's success. Paul managed the Electronic Research Section and over his 28-year career was instrumental in the product and process technologies of an amazing variety of projects. Bill Hewlett and Barney were constantly in his lab, making suggestions and urging a scientific approach to new measurement and integrated circuit and computational concepts. And Paul was the perfect leader to carry out those managers' wishes. His story is a fascinating look at HP Labs breakthroughs of the 1960s - 1980s. Read on.

Mike Needham - If you think of a corporation as an army, the foot soldiers are the field sales reps. Nothing happens until someone sells something. It is the sales rep who has to face his/her mirror every morning and say, "Go get 'em Tiger!" Mike's memoir takes us into his life selling to the industrialized Midwest, where strategic factory decisions on marketing different product lines cause major eruptions to field reporting and accountability and customer relations. We HP retirees owe a LOT to these intrepid people.

Roy Verley - Suppose you were assigned to write speeches for John Young during the first year of your HP career? Then suppose you worked closely with Young, Dean Morton, Joel Birnbaum and others on the business introductions of major new computer systems like the Spectrum Computer Project? Or in 1992 you were caught up in a preemptive "misunderstanding" between Dave Packard and John Young about John's impending retirement in a Forbes Magazine interview. And suppose you got to serve as Lew Platt's media coach when his presidency was announced? Now you get to satisfy all your suppositions with Roy Verley's new HP memoir. This is a fun read.

Wilhelm Jirgal - Imagine starting your new job in 1960, with HP GmbH located in an old textile manufacturing building. For Willi Jirgal, it must have felt much like the Polly and Jake garage (big enough for about 15), when Bill and Dave moved from their Addison garage in 1940. But the German factory found itself on a MUCH FASTER growth curve. Willi's remembrances of how managers Fred Schroder and Eberhard Knoblauch, with Ray Demere from the US, installed the HP Way (e.g.,management by objectives, the open door policy, first name relationships, coffee speeches every week) into Europe.

Chris Clare - Imagine a boy about 12, getting his dad to buy him a WWII war surplus bombing computer, the Norden bombsight, a top secret invention which revolutionized precision bombing over Germany. And then taking it apart, down to the nuts and bolts, and reassembling it. Imagine building a go-cart with a Ford Model A transmission. Or building a ham radio, or a Jacobs ladder of arcing high voltage that drove the neighbors' TVs crazy. And then went to Cal Poly and came to HP Labs, to live a career of intrepid design inventions and major automation improvements in semi-conductor processing technology. This is a great story.

Dave Evans - Other than silicon in integrated circuits, the only other semiconductor technology which is creating massive social and economic change is the light-emitting semiconductor technology. As multi-color and super-high-efficiency, and brilliant new high-intensity lights come into use, a lot of that accomplishment can be laid at the feet of LED application engineers like HPA's Dave Evans. With hundreds of HP customer designers, engineers like Dave promoted the design complexities of lights and displays to exploit their uniqueness for customer-pleasing products which have revolutionized our lives.

John Wastle - This is a story about the HP Way, installing the HP work culture in a class-society in Europe, and full-on inter-HP-divisional politics. John grows up in Scotland in an industrial apprenticeship role, enters the HP production functions, moves into the beginnings of fabricated parts outsourcing, and serves his career in crucial International Procurement Operations. He and his team brought the HP Way into his subcontractors around the globe. His narrative has some rough edges, and many Nixonian (expletives), has some disguised personalities, and is long at 145 pages. But it reads like a novel, and you will be charmed by this memoir of life in the HP trenches.

John Borgsteadt - From the time John joined the US Navy 2 months after Pearl Harbor, then joined HP in 1948, he was a busy man. His 45 year career in HP marketing brought him in contact with a world of visitors, his decades-long volunteer work at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and its MBARI research arm brought him in contact with Dave Packard. His personal activities in mountain climbing, precision target shooting, classical music, and global travel were enjoyed by both he and his wife Olive, and give us an interesting read.

Marvin Patterson - This is a story about motivational leadership and technology dissemination in a globally-dispersed enterprise. It is also about organizing creativity and innovation-sharing, crucial for a large enterprise like HP. Marv thought a lot about these principles as he progressed in his career-but first he had to gain experience in the design trenches and project leadership like his Big Bertha product. His observation: "If HP only knew what HP knows, we'd be a much greater company" says it all. And it pinpoints the focus of the centralized HP Corporate Engineering Division of the 1990s.

Carl Cottrell - The Hewlett-Packard of the 1950s had recovered from the Post-WWII business slump, and was embarked on solid technology-based growth, to continue for decades. The engineers who ran the company were learning how to organize a business, finances, work culture, people-relations, and customer satisfaction in the sales operations. Carl joined HP in 1952, and tells us how HP engineers built the preeminent business of the "golden years of technology" in the second half of the 20th Century. Read on.

Ted Podelnyk and Bernie Clifton - The LasertJet printer and follow-on InkJet printers catapulted HP into a household name. Then came the Color LaserJet printer, the project that challenged authors Ted and Bernie to printing excellence, and which is the subject of this interesting HP memoir.

Al Steiner - Read how a Stanford BSME with a Harvard MBA joins the world's preeminent high tech company, climbs up the management ladder, moves his high-growth division out of state, makes serious and lasting contributions to the telecoms industry, dodges a medical disaster bullet, then accepts foreign assignments for HP which leverage his technological experiences.

Bob Grimm - Follow Bob's career from Purdue in 1951, to engineering in the Redwood Bldg, through Dymec and HP Systems, to running 3 different Tech centers for Barney's HP Labs. Plus, read why Bob is probably the HP record holder for decades of extraordinary Community Service, some shared with his wife Marion.

Jerry Collins - Before Jerry passed away March 21, 2009, he had taken the time to write down in considerable detail, his fascinating engineering career. Out of a boyhood in Alabama, he worked for at least 9 different high-tech companies, after his Korean Wartime duty. Intrepid might be a suitable adjective for Jerry. Jerry's grandson, Ian Plamondon, took Jerry's writings and compiled a fascinating book, and with the permission of Jerry's wife and family, gave us the OK to publish the HP/Dymec chapters of that book. It was a rapid growth period for that HP systems division.

Bob Steward - The enormous strides in getting light out of semiconductors did not come easily. Engineers like Bob Steward endured years of tough and frustrating times, to enlist science and find the secrets of processing crystals to make light, first for little numbers, then to street lights, brake lights and iPad backlights. Then to serious commercial substitutes for tungsten and sodium gas and fluorescence lights to meet the global climate change threat.

John Julian Uebbing - Starting in the 1950s, as HP exploited semiconductor and optoelectronic technologies like photo-diodes and emitters, then light emitting diodes, and later, fiber optics, it depended on bright and clever engineer/scientists like John Uebbing to do the exploiting.

Dave Kirby - How do you publicize a young company like HP, growing into greatness, to the global public, its customers and its employees, and the business and financial community? You hire a Public Relations Manager like Dave Kirby and get out of his way.

Hugo Vifian - As HP's RF and Microwave revenues exploded in the 1970s, driven by the introduction of those blockbuster Spectrum and Network Analyzers, Swiss Engineer Hugo Vifian moved to HP's new Santa Rosa Division to take over Lab management of that innovative technology and expanding product line. His life story is a fun read.

Al Bagley - Follow a young man from a small California desert town, to rise to a WWII B-29 Pilot, graduate from Cal Tech and Stanford, then lead a great HP Division to become the World's Cesium Timekeeper, to measure microinches with dual-lasers, and to dominate the 20th-century high-tech industry of frequency and time measurements.

Cort Van Rensselaer - We know a person who not only started to work at Hewlett-Packard in December 1942 but also took the time to write about it. We call Cort Van Rensselaer "Mr. HP Longevity" because he remembers working part-time in the Polly & Jake garage and the Redwood Building during his engineering student days at Stanford. After his US Navy service and Masters Degree, he came back full time for a fruitful career of 45 years. This is his wonderful memoir of those times.

James Robinson - No corporation can operate without their Facilities Department. The Facilities people operate behind the scenes, with none of the excitement of the Sales Dept, the inventors in R&D, or the production geniuses who ship the final products. James Robinson was one of those unheralded facilities workers who supplied the services that kept HP a great place to come to work every day. His memories of those days are another view of the HP work culture.

Les Besser - This is a story of survival. And accomplishment. A gritty tale of a childhood during WWII, finding achievement in athletics, fighting in the Hungarian Revolution, then a dangerous escape to the West. Although Les had worked at HP for less than four years, his COMPACT circuit optimization software truly made a HUGE difference in engineering processes. Later, his continuing education group provided training for a large number of professionals.

Zvonko Fazarinc - Many of us wondered what it was like to work for Barney Oliver in HP Labs? Zvonko spent several decades working there and has nothing but appreciation for the stimulating intellectual environment he experienced there. His major accomplishments in computer-based circuit modeling and education were significant and extraordinary.

Betty Haines - Did you ever wonder what went on behind the scenes in the headquarters of the world’s greatest high-tech company in those Golden Years of 1960-1990? Betty Haines was on the PBX switchboard and the PA system and around the mail room to know all the top execs and the daily goings on. It will be hard not to laugh out loud.

Hank Taylor - It all seems so simple now. Corporate data is "in the cloud" on server farms with 50,000 disks. Data and voice circle the globe on fiber optic networks at 10 GB/s, PER COLOR, PER FIBER. Terminals are in your shirt pocket. But in the 1950s, it was punchcard tabulators, teletypes, Kardex, manual processes, telephone and the US mail. Information Technology system visionaries at HP were scratching out progress, project by project. One of our best scratchers was Hank Taylor.

Arthur Fong - Here is an interesting question. If Microwave Engineer Art Fong had decided to turn down Bill Hewlett's job offer back in 1945, how would the Hewlett Packard product line of microwave signal generators, bridges, and a long line of spectrum analyzers be different today?
Here is the story...

Chuck House - This is a story about engineering politics, written by the accomplished author of "HP Phenomenon." During the 1970s & 80s the Data Domain (he coined the term) was in ferment, with a maddening variety of IC and firmware technologies. The Birthing of Logic Analyzers plays out over a cast of fascinating personalities; of Chuck's management, his design customers, his technical mentor gurus, and his engineering team.

John Minck - Take a work culture trip through the Golden Age of high tech, from the 1930s to 1990, inside the Hewlett-Packard company, looking at organization, legendary people, and significant products.

Dave Cochran - Start with an electrical engineer designing test instruments, convert him to a specialist in computation processes of the first desktop scientific computer, and finish with the blockbuster HP-35 handheld.

Ray Smelek - Management perspectives on leadership of several HP division organizations, opening new HP operations in foreign nations, and direct personal advice on growing a successful leader.

Bob DeVries - The high-tech world of HP, from the perspective of an inventive Product Designer and the dozens of oscilloscopes, tape recorders and microwave products he participated in developing.

George Stanley - The absolute crucial role of Customer and Field Engineer Training to high-tech, a best-seller book, "Transistor Basics," and cheerleading the industry for HP Interface Bus and programmable systems.

Jim Hall - The "Father" of the HP Laserjet printers, arguably one of the world's most important publishing product lines, tells the inside story of how HP's inventive teams brought it all to a waiting world.

Ed Phillips - The professional HP career of a creative mechanical engineer, years of designing microwave products, and how to overcome a continuing string of difficult design issues.