David Packard, Co-Founder of Hewlett Packard
Exemplary Commitment to Public and Community Service
Feb 25, 2008
An exhibit at the Los Altos History Museum honors the contributions of David and Lucile Packard to their community and their dedication to public service. The family's philanthropy reaches far beyond their hometown Los Altos (California). The David and Lucile Packard Foundationenables the creative pursuit of science, expands reproductive health options among the world's poor and seeks to protect the environment.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Started in a Garage in Palo Alto
Lucile Salter and David Packard met at Stanford University in the 1930s. The success story of Bill Hewlett and David Packard, who started a corporate giant on a $500 budget in a garage in Palo Alto is well known. Their innovative business and management approach, “the HP way”, simply put as “people do better work, if they have a little fun doing it”, pioneered flexible work hours, medical coverage and open offices. “The HP” way respected personal autonomy and stressed corporate decentralization, which led to many leading-edge products. A famous example is Bill Hewlett’s wish for a pocket-sized calculator. The wisdom of the day was that no one would pay 10 times the going price of a slide ruler. Hewlett challenged the marketing department and said: he would. The shirt pocket-sized HP-9100 was a huge success.
Communities Must Be Better for Our Presence
David Packard’s philosophy in a nutshell reads: "Communities must be better for our presence.” Despite the business demands placed upon him, he and his wife participated in the Palo Alto School Board and Stanford University’s Board of Trustees. He also served as Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1972 in Washington D.C..
Lucile Packard worked closely with her husband to build and operate Hewlett-Packard. As secretary and accountant she was involved in all business decisions in the early days. Later she chose to work full-time as a volunteer. As a student she had already helped at the Stanford Convalescent Home, which treated children with tuberculosis. The family later donated $40 million for the construction of the Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital. They formalized their passion for philanthropy with the creation of the Lucile and David Packard Foundation, one of the world’s wealthiest private foundations.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium: Conservation, Fun and Learning
The Packards’ two daughters, students of marine biology, deserve credit for interesting their parents in the preservation of the Monterey Bay. They provided the initial financial backing for the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Packard, an avid blacksmith, personally designed and created parts for the wave machines in the aquarium’s kelp forest at his forge in Big Sur. His daughter, Julie Packard, became the aquarium’s first Executive Director.
The exhibit in the Los Altos History Museum is in itself community building for it inspires by illustrating examples of extraordinary lives.
