William Redington Hewlett

Founds Hewlett-Packard with David Packard in Packard's garage at 367 Addison Avenue, Palo Alto. They flip a coin to decide whose name goes first. Bill wins. Their first product is an audio oscillator. Walt Disney Studios buys eight of them for the sound design of Fantasia.

Joins the Army Signal Corps as a captain. Packard runs the company alone. When Hewlett returns after the war, HP has 200 employees and $1.5 million in revenue. They move out of the garage.

Introduces the "HP Way," a management philosophy built on open floor plans, flexible hours, and management by walking around. No time clocks. No locked storerooms. Engineers can take parts home for personal projects. The approach becomes a model for Silicon Valley culture.

HP releases the HP-35, the world's first handheld scientific calculator. It fits in a shirt pocket and makes the slide rule obsolete overnight. Engineers call it "the electronic slide rule." It costs $395. They sell 100,000 in the first year.

Dies at his home in Palo Alto at 87. The garage where HP started is now California Historical Landmark No. 976, marked as "the birthplace of Silicon Valley." His charitable foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, holds over $9 billion in assets.