Hewlett-Packard of the 20th century was known for its culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, fostered by founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. The company was at the forefront of technological advancements, developing groundbreaking products such as scientific calculators, printers, and instrumentation equipment. The entrepreneurial spirit of the founders and early employees drove a culture of creativity and risk-taking.

HP's reputation for engineering excellence was a cornerstone of its success. The company prioritized research and development, investing in cutting-edge technology and recruiting top engineering talent. Products were known for their high quality, reliability, and performance, earning HP a loyal customer base.

Bill and Dave fostered a unique corporate culture that emphasized employee empowerment, trust, and respect. The company's decentralized management structure encouraged innovation and autonomy at all levels. Employees felt a strong sense of ownership and pride in their work, contributing to a positive and collaborative work environment.

HP had a strong reputation for understanding and meeting customer needs. The company maintained close relationships with customers, actively seeking feedback and incorporating it into product development. This customer-centric approach helped HP to develop products that addressed real-world problems and provided value to customers.

Bill and Dave were known for their long-term perspective and commitment to sustainable growth. They prioritized investing in research and development, employee training, and community engagement over short-term financial gains. This strategic focus on long-term value creation contributed to HP's reputation as a stable and reliable company.

When financial managers take over successful companies founded by engineers, there can be a shift in the company's focus and priorities. Financial managers often prioritize financial metrics such as profitability, cost-cutting, and maximizing shareholder value. This can sometimes lead to changes in the company's strategy, including:

Financial managers may focus on cutting costs to improve profitability. This could involve reducing research and development spending, scaling back on innovation, or even layoffs to streamline operations.

Financial managers may prioritize short-term financial gains over long-term investments. This can result in decisions that sacrifice long-term growth and innovation for immediate profits.

There may be an emphasis on financial engineering techniques such as mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, or restructuring to enhance shareholder value.

The company's culture may change from one focused on innovation and engineering excellence to one driven by financial performance metrics. This shift can sometimes lead to a loss of the entrepreneurial spirit that characterized the company in its early days.

In some cases, there may be a decreased emphasis on product quality as financial managers prioritize cost-cutting measures that could compromise product integrity.

From People's Computer Company, October 1972:

HEWLETT PACKARD

HP is the other Big One in the ed biz. While DEC's emphasis has been in small system installations. HP's strength has been in 8, 16 and 32 user timesharing systems. The HP 2000 series timesharing systems start at $50K and zoom to $150K before you know it. They offer reliability and have a great track reoord in education. The 2000 series has been around since 1968. In our experience the HP 2000 hardware and software combination has been the most reliable timesharing system we've ever used. A number of small timesharing services in our area sell time on HP 2000's for under $5 per hour. We have had nothing but excellent experience dealing with these sources over regular telephone lines, using acoustically coupled terminals. If you use telephone communications you know how messy it can be. We've had excellent luck with HP. Some of these little businesses leave their systems unattended as they're so confident of their reliability.

The latest central processor from HP is the 2100A. The older model for the 2000 series is the 2116 which you can pick up used at reasonabl@ prtces, but if you plant to expand , buy the 2100.

HP's BASIC includes matrix operations, logical operators (AND, OR, NOT) and string functions and operations. (Strings? See Pages 10 and 11.) HP has also added a few goodie features to their software which make it awfully nice. The software has been around for years and is essentially bug free. The 2000 also runs batch FORTRAN IV, ALGOL and assembler.

For some years HP has been selling CAl drill and practice software for their large timesharing system. Only recently have they put any real dollars and sense into the problem solving market. Primarily, this effort is represented by the HP Educational User's Group, their newsletter and a semi-annual journal. The users group has an executive board of educators who represent all types of users and are dispersed geographically. They are mostly HP users, as you might suspect. Admission to the users group is free to HP users and $15 per year for "outsiders."

The HP Educational Users Group Newsletter is GOOD and is worth every penny of the $15 you might have to pay for it. The newsletter includes articles contributed by users on the order of ... this is about what we are doing ... project information ... what others are doing as described by the editor ... desaiptions of computer education organizations ... workbook and textbook reviews ... where to get·types of info (tidbits) ... and of course, the inevitable sales pitch for new HP educational products. This is the first quality newsletter that meets the needs of the classroom computer education teacher, that we have seen. It's success is largely due to the effort that is made to provide good, factual information for classroom teachers without trying to kill 10 other birds with the same stone. (Now that we've said it, let's hope they keep it up!)

HP also has a fantastic program library of BASIC application programs for every possible application. Most are contributed by users. The educational user group has their own education program library available free to members of the Education Users Group.

2000 SERIES HARDWARE

The 2000 A, B & C are the disk or drum storage versions of the 2000 series. The 2000A is the originol timeshare BASIC system. The B and C are bigger versions of same. The 2000E and F are cartridge disc models that are brand new. The differences in the BASIC software of each system are minor. We place most of the software improvements on the 2000 C is the category of "luxury" items. Hardware differencers between the models are mainly found in the amount of storage available and the number and type of terminals the system will drive. Under DOS, HP 2000 software includes FORTRAN IV, ALCOL and assembler.

HP 2000E - Had we gone to press 6 months ago, this description would have been found under the heading of "Science Fiction." But now we are pleased to report the latest addition to the HP 2000 series, the 2OOOE, is alive and weil.

The 2000E is the low price ($50,000) latest technology, replacement for the 2000A. It features a 16K CUP and HP's new 5 million byte cartridge disk. This new disk has two platters. One (2 1/2 million bytes) is a removable disk pack which oHers all sorts of possibilities. One nice aspect of the removable disk pack is that it allows you to keep a copy of your entire "system" so that in case of a crash, you can reload in seconds. You don't need a magnetic tape unit for the 2000E. The E also has a hardware multiplexer and uses HP's floating point hardware. Contrary to oompetitive rumors, the E is not a slow system ... we've been on with 6 other users and have not noticed any appreciable delay. We're also impressed with the reliability of this early version of 2000E software. It's not perfect but no bad crash·bugs have shown up yet. (Yet!)

The 2000E drives 16 terminals at 10 to 30 CPS (rumor has the speed up to 240 CPS). The BASIC is standard HP 2000 BASIC without any bells or whistles (they didn't include ENTER for some dumb reason). CHAIN and COMMON are available and necessary as user space is only 4180 words. It's our opinion that this system, software and hardware, will adequately meet the needs of most any school or district.

Our local district runs the E as a timesharing classroom system each day and runs a batch FORTRAN application under DOSM each evening. So far, we have heard few complaints.

16K processor
5 million bytes cartridge disk
16 terminals (10 to 30 CPS)
$50,000 plus terminals