News release

HP Presents: The Beatles! Backstage and Behind the Scenes

HP exhibition showcases rarely seen photos of Fab Four's historic visit to "The Ed Sullivan Show"

HP today announced the opening of "HP Presents: The Beatles! Backstage and Behind the Scenes," a fine art photography exhibit showcasing 84 rarely seen restored photographs of The Beatles taken prior to their history-making appearance on CBS's "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1964. The exhibit will run from July 26 through Aug. 27 in the Allen Lambert Galleria at BCE Place in Toronto.

The extraordinary photographs in "HP Presents: The Beatles! Backstage and Behind the Scenes," taken by noted photojournalist Bill Eppridge and stored in the photo archives of CBS Television, offer a candid and unstaged view of the Fab Four - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr - rehearsing and relaxing inside the Plaza Hotel, on the tarmac, at the beach, in the studio and on the train.

The images remained unpublished until 2001, when a representative from the CBS Photo Archive approached HP Labs about restoring and reproducing them for a Canadian exhibition. HP Labs combined its unique computational color reproduction capabilities with HP inkjet printing technologies to restore the photos to their original luster.

"Digital technology has a real power in its ability to record historic moments for future generations - much like these Beatles photographs that have been brought to life decades after they were first taken," said Ralph McNeil, vice president of consumer marketing, HP Canada. "On the 40th anniversary of The Beatles' momentous arrival in North America, HP takes great pride in staging this free exhibition and simultaneously showcasing how our technology helps people capture, restore and share memorable experiences."

The Beatles' appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in February 1964 was a major event in music history, marking the beginning of "Beatlemania" in North America. Mr. Sullivan received 50,000 requests for tickets for a theatre that seated just over 700 people, and an unprecedented 73 million viewers tuned in to see the show that night.

"HP Presents: The Beatles! Backstage and Behind the Scenes" documents the hours and days surrounding the Fab Four's North American debut, transforming them from a purely British phenomenon to one that would revolutionize the global pop music scene. The Beatles' Canadian appearances in Vancouver on Aug. 22, Toronto on Sept. 7, and Montreal on Sept. 8 of that year made headlines across the country.

HP Labs is one of the world's great industrial research laboratories, providing technological leadership to HP and inventing new technologies that change markets and create new businesses. HP pioneered thermal inkjet technology more than 20 years ago and introduced its first inkjet product in 1984. Today, HP is a world leader in printing and imaging solutions with personal Deskjet and Photosmart printers, LaserJet, inkjet and large-format Designjet printers, and Indigo commercial digital presses.

HP's innovative consumer products - ranging from the uncompromising print quality, performance, and reliability of the Designjet printers that produced The Beatles exhibit to the digital cameras, photo printers, handheld devices, notebook, desktop and media center PCs that help consumers capture, print and share their own historic moments - make HP the leading consumer technology company in the world.

About HP

HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended April 30, 2004, HP revenue totaled $76.8 billion. More information about HP (NYSE, Nasdaq: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.