Noel (Ed) Porter
His Honor, Mayor of Palo Alto

Noel Porter was truly one of the most unforgettable characters among our unique HP managers in our great company. Ed was a Stanford classmate of Bill and Dave (and a radio tech buddy of Barney). They asked him to join them in their business during the war, but he was a Navy officer and couldn't join until discharged. He was famous as a kid for being selected by GE as "the smartest kid in California," by getting the top score in a test they gave throughout the state. It was said that Bill Hewlett, who was in the U.S. Army, posted to the Pentagon during WWII, recommended Ed to the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships, where he served in the infrared engineering dept.

Long before John Doyle coined the term, MBWA (Management by Walking Around) in the 1960s, Ed was an ever-present manager out in the production areas every day. It was second nature to him to be out talking with employees, a people person, keeping directly informed about production problems, in all its aspects. Certainly Porter was popular with the assembly force, and all knew him personally.

Ed was an enormously-talented man, as demonstrated by his ability to run HP manufacturing during some of our fastest growth years AT THE SAME TIME he was active on the Palo Alto City Council for two 6-year terms, followed by 5 consecutive 1-year terms as Palo Alto Mayor. He was an amazingly-fast thinker, and sort of flamboyant in his personal style. In his own way, he was a genius in being able to juggle these difficult jobs together. He would spend the mornings at HP, running the plant. Then he went to city hall for the afternoons to run the city. Evenings, he would return to the plant, reading operational correspondence, and typing small 4 x 6 "Portergrams" to everyone that needed jogging, using his two-finger typing method.

Ed was the son of a Palo Alto Episcopal minister, which always gave us some amusement, because he was rather well known to imbibe (occasionally). In fact, the well-known wall posters which appeared at the annual management conference in Monterey, once mentioned Ed's drinking at his expense. The poster showed a typical company conference room, with Porter seated at the table, and a look of impatience on his face in the candid photo. The humorous caption said, "I wonder when the bar opens?"

-- John Minck

There is additional semi-official historical information of Ed at the Hewlett-Packard website at this URL. It includes some of his civic accomplishments during his tenure as Mayor, such as the acquisition of Palo Alto's 1400 acre Foothill Park:

http://www.hp.com/retiree/history/founders/early_contributors/noel.htm