The Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) was incorporated on August 18, 1947, and went public on November 6, 1957.The company was founded in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California by Bill Hewlett and David Packard, and initially produced a line of electronic test and measurement equipment. The HP Garage at 367 Addison Avenue is now designated an official California Historical Landmark and is marked with a plaque calling it the “Birthplace of ‘Silicon Valley'”.

HP produced lines of printers, scanners, digital cameras, calculators, PDAs, servers, workstation computers, and computers for home and small-business use; many of the computers came from the 2002 merger with Compaq. HP as of 2001 promoted itself as supplying not just hardware and software, but also a full range of services to design, implement, and support IT infrastructure.