William Hewlett, the electrical engineer who in 1938 set up a tiny electronics company with David Packard in Palo Alto, California, that ultimately led to the creation of Silicon Valley, died yesterday aged 87.
Not only did Hewlett and his partner establish Hewlett-Packard, one of America's largest electronics firms, in a barren, dusty area of northern California but they created a business philosophy that bucked the button-down approach of the day - the HP Way.
The pair were committed to a set of corporate values that eschewed hierarchy, encouraging individual creativity and ideas, and the informal business leadership approach of 'management by walking around'.
Hewlett was so averse to convention that he would choose to sit at the middle of the table during meetings, and pioneered the open plan office.
With an initial investment of just $538, the company went on to develop many of the key technological innovations of the past 60 years, including the electronic calculator and some of the first PCs. Last year, Hewlett-Packard and its satellites had a combined revenue of more than $55 billion (£37bn).
'They created the first Silicon Valley company,' said Steve Jobs, founder and chairman of Apple Computer Inc. 'When David Packard died in 1996 it was the beginning of the end of an era; now this is the end.
The two men founded Hewlett-Packard while they were doing graduate work at Stanford University. Initially they tried to sell a variety of inventions including a self-flushing urinal, a bowling lane foul indicator and a shock machine to help people lose weight. Their big break came when Walt Disney Studios asked them for eight audio oscillators, used to test sound equipment in the production of the movie Fantasia .
In 1968, after the company had invented the HP 9100, the first desktop scientific calculator, it was Hewlett who issued a challenge to his engineers: design a version that would fit in his shirt pocket.
The engineers answered in 1972 with the HP 35, the world's first pocket scientific calculator.
Hewlett's informal approach to business was perhaps best illustrated by the story that in 1967 he picked up the phone to speak to a 12-year-old who was calling the company to ask for parts to electronic components. The boy was Steve Jobs.
'Not only did he give me the parts, but the following summer he saw that I had a job in the division of the company.' Jobs said that the encounter changed his life and added that what he learned at the company became a blueprint for his own company.
Hewlett, who was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and moved to California when he was three, was an outdoorsman. He made a number of difficult ascents in Yosemite and was an ardent amateur botanist.
In 1987, he became one of the nation's leading philanthropists. The Hewlett Foundation, which has an endowment of $3.5 billion, focuses on conflict resolution, education, environment, the performing arts and population issues.
Hewlett, who at one time owned about 30 percent of Hewlett-Packard's stock and whose fortune was last year estimated at $ 9 billion, did not live a jet-set life.'We felt we were just ordinary people,' said his son, Walter Hewlett, recalled yesterday.
