The Hewlett-Packard 9100A is an early programmable calculator, first appearing in 1968. HP called it a desktop calculator because, as Bill Hewlett said, "If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our customers' computer gurus because it didn't look like an IBM. We therefore decided to call it a calculator, and all such nonsense disappeared."
"The new Hewlett-Packard 9100A personal computer" is "ready, willing, and able... to relieve you of waiting to get on the big computer."
Electronic calculator prototype, made by Thomas E. Osborne for Hewlett-Packard, 1964, in the National Museum of American History
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components, as well as software and related services to consumers, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and large enterprises, including customers in the government, health, and education sectors. The company was founded in a one-car garage in Palo Alto by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939, 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's headquarters in Palo Alto, California, 2013
The garage in Palo Alto, where Hewlett and Packard began the company
The HP200A, a precision audio oscillator, was the company's very first financially successful product.
Introduced in 1968, "The new Hewlett-Packard 9100A personal computer is ready, willing, and able ... to relieve you of waiting to get on the big computer."
