When Bill Hewlett and David Packard started their company in a garage in Palo Alto in 1939, they were devoted to building precision measurement instruments at very competitive prices. Their first successful product was a precision audio oscillator, the HP200A, which was still being built in 1972.
In 1966, the company started building minicomputers for controlling lab equipment. These systems known as HP2100 and HP1000 were produced for 20 years. In 1968, they introduced a programmable calculator, the HP9100A, which as been called the first personal computer.
In 1984, HP started building inkjet and laser printers.
By 1999, the computers and the printerrs had grown to be the majority of the business, and the non-computer company (inclinding the original test and measurement division) was spun out in an 8 billion dollar IPO to become Agilent. (This was well before HP took over the failing Compaq, which had already taken over the failed Digital Equipment Corporation.)
Since then, Agilent has been growing its activities in life sciences research, building MRI machines, genetic sequencing machines and buying Dako, a Danish cancer diagnostics company, while selling off units supporting semiconductor manufacturing. The original test and measurement unit still exists, but it is now a small group that again does not fit well with its parent company, so Agilent is splitting into two companies. The Agilent name goes with the life sciences, and the test and measurement unit will now be called Keysight Technologies.
History repeats itself: First as farce, then as tragedy. I think the customers will have a hard time finding the twice-renamed instruments in the future.
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