Photos and stories about Dave

Early interest in radio

As a boy in Pueblo, Colorado, Dave recalled connecting his first vacuum tube with a variable condenser, a coil, a grid leak, an A battery and a B battery. With this apparatus on the family dining-room table, he remembered the great excitement as his family took turns listening through headphones to WHO (radio station) in Des Moines, Iowa, an astonishing 600 miles away!

Dave put together a fairly sophisticated vacuum-tube receiver when he was 12 years old. By the time Dave reached Centennial High School, he was a proficient radio operator.

The value of teamwork

When he was a boy in Pueblo, Colorado, Dave knew a fellow named Mr. Porter who took a personal interest in both grade-school and high-school athletics. Mr. Porter told the boys, "When two teams are playing for a championship and each has equally good players, teamwork becomes very important, especially in the split-second plays. Given equally good players and equally good teamwork, the team with the strongest will to win will prevail."

Dave always remembered that advice, and said it was a guiding principle in developing and managing HP. As Dave put it, "Get the best people, stress the importance of teamwork, and get them fired up to win the game."

Lessons learned about the value of personal communication — the birth of MBWA

In 1934, after graduating from Stanford, Dave went east to work for General Electric. His first job was to figure out how to improve the quality of tubes they were manufacturing. Dave remembered learning everything he could about possible causes of failure, and then deciding to spend most of his time on the factory floor to make sure every step was done properly.

It soon became apparent that the instructions the engineering department gave the factory people were not adequate to ensure that every step would be done properly. Dave found the factory people eager to do the job right. He worked with them to make tests and identify every possible cause of failure. After that, every tube passed its final test without a single failure.

It was a very important lesson for him — that personal communication was often necessary to back up written instructions. And Dave said it was the genesis of what became "management by walking around."

On setting up the company

"The thing that stimulated me to think about leaving General Electric in 1938 is that Fred Terman arranged an opportunity for me to come back to Palo Alto with the express purpose of getting together with Bill to see if we could get something started. He arranged a research grant to build a tube and test its theory. Fred also arranged for me to get credit for the work I'd done at GE and, with just one year of residence, get my Engineer degree at Stanford. We had in mind that this was the time when Bill and I were going to see if we could make a go of it. So Bill found a house on Addison Avenue in Palo Alto. The house is still there, as a matter of fact. We rented the lower floor where my wife Lu and I lived. There was a little building out back where Bill lived, and a garage that we set up as a shop to work in."

On his relationship with Bill Hewlett

"We generally had the same attitudes toward most things. We've never had any problem in coming out with almost the same conclusion on almost everything we've done. I don't know if you could explain how or why that came about; it just came out that way."

"Bill, I think, has been a little more interested in the engineering side and I was more interested in the business side."

On making quality products

One day, in the late 1960s, a young production engineer approached Dave with a money-saving idea. He wanted to use a cheaper and thinner metal for the frame of an instrument. "The customers won't know the difference between the old and the new," he told Dave. "This new material looks just like the old standard framework." Without a word being said, Dave picked up the prototype product with both hands, twisted it until it was broken, placed the snarled money-saving scheme on the workbench and walked away.

Subway ride to the New York Stock Exchange

The day of HP's first public listing on the New York Stock Exchange (in 1961) did not start smoothly. A few HP people flew to New York the day before the event and stayed uptown at the Essex House. Early the next morning, they set off for Wall Street. Dave opted for the subway rather than a more expensive taxi ride, so they jumped on the BMT subway and headed downtown. Unfortunately, Dave wasn't much of an underground navigator; after much debate, the HP contingent made the wrong connection at Times Square. They arrived on Wall Street late and were immediately ushered into a huge corner office. They were greeted by the chairman of the exchange, Keith Funston, who laughed when Dave explained that they'd gotten lost on the subway. He couldn't fathom that they would take the subway to such an important event.

On the HP Way

"I believe that people want to do a good job. They enjoy doing things right and making a contribution and will further respond to recognition both in terms of compensation and other non-monetary rewards. I also believe that people always do better work when they have a little fun doing it. They ought to look forward to going to work every morning. The extent to which you can generate that spirit contributes to what we call the HP Way."

On making a contribution

HP's first attorney and fellow member of the Palo Alto School Board, Nate Finch, remembered that when Dave was elected to the school board, "he visited every school, talked to all the administrators and teachers and went up to Sacramento to the office of the Superintendent of Education of the State of California. He went through their entire plan so that he would know what he was doing and talking about. Dave studied. He didn't like to serve on anything — a committee, a commission, whatever — unless he could make a contribution. Dave was not going to be a just a name on a letterhead.

"Dave was a student and a teacher. If you worked for Dave, you learned from Dave."

On the past and the future

"Bill and I were fortunate to be in on the ground floor of the electronics industry. When I think of the industry's phenomenal growth, it reminds me of a story I like to tell about myself. In my sophomore year at Stanford, I took a course in American history. I had the opportunity to do some independent study on the westward movement in the United States, beginning with the early pioneers and continuing through the 19th century. I remember thinking, unhappily, that I was born 100 years too late, that there were no more frontiers to conquer, that my generation would be deprived of exciting opportunities offered our forebears.

"But, in fact, we went on to make breathtaking technical advances. In the 20th century, we have experienced dizzying progress. Today, with our new understanding of the atom, we can create materials that do not occur in nature — materials that are harder than glass; glass that is ductile. This discovery has unleashed the whole field of genetic engineering, offering a whole new world of scientific opportunity. Everywhere I look, I see potential for growth; for discovery far greater than anything we have seen in the 20th century."