Today in 1939, Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett established Hewlett-Packard with an initial capital investment of $538.
The company’s name was determined by the flip of a coin. Their first product was a sound oscillator sold to Walt Disney Studios for use on the soundtrack of Fantasia. Packard and Hewlett worked from a garage at the back of 367 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto, California, which was later designated a California registered historical landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the birthplace of “Silicon Valley.”