Hewlett-Packard Co. employees in Palo Alto, Calif., are working to save the house and one-car garage -- dubbed the "birthplace of Silicon Valley" -- where William (Bill) Hewlett and David Packard began making their first product in 1939.
"We took the whole thing apart and are rebuilding it using the original frame and original 52 boards," said archivist Anna Mancini, who's overseeing the restoration. "We want to do it right."
After dismantling the 12-foot-by-18-foot garage, sanding down the boards to eliminate termites and reinforcing the frame to withstand earthquakes, workers nailed the original Douglas-fir planks back into place on June 30. Restoration work continues on the garden shed and the house, where bricks are numbered to aid in reassembly.
Employees are so interested in the project that Ms. Mancini maintains a website that charts its progress. Started in April, 2004, by former chief executive officer Carly Fiorina, the project may be completed this year.
New CEO Mark Hurd, who took over from Ms. Fiorina in April, inherited a company that has struggled to deliver on the profits promised by the $18.9-billion (U.S.) purchase of Compaq Computer Corp.
HP lost its lead in the personal computer market to Dell Inc. last year, and Mr. Hurd is working to make sure Dell doesn't take away HP's title as the world's largest printer maker.
Mr. Hurd spent the first four months at HP visiting company properties to seek ways to cut costs.
On July 19, he said the company will eliminate 14,500 workers to save $1.9-billion a year.
Mr. Hurd hadn't visited the garage as of Aug. 9, HP spokesman Ryan Donovan said.
Back in the thirties, it was the garage's potential use as a workshop that prompted Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard -- who met as students at nearby Stanford University -- to rent the house at 367 Addison Ave.
"People like to visit some place and say, "Boy, right here, this happened,' " said David Kirby, who was hired by Mr. Packard in 1962 to set up a public relations department. Mr. Packard and his wife, Lucile, shared a three-room apartment on the first floor of the house, built in 1905. Then unmarried, Mr. Hewlett lived in the garden shed, an 8-by-18-foot bunkhouse with a dirt floor, a few yards from the garage.
"It was the Depression," Ms. Mancini said of the rustic accommodations. "There was not a lot of housing, and they were graduate students with not a lot of money."
Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard shared the $45 (U.S.) monthly rent. After Mr. Hewlett married and moved out, the bunkhouse became the company's first business office.
Hewlett-Packard was started with $538 in capital, including cash and the value of the used Sears Roebuck and Co. drill press owned by Mr. Packard, the company said.
Now the world's largest maker of computer printers, Hewlett-Packard had profit of $3.5-billion on sales of $79.9-billion last year.
One of the duo's first customers was Walt Disney Studios, which bought eight oscillators to test a sound system for Fantasia.
After giving up their rental on the house in 1940, Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard didn't visit the garage again until 1989. Mr. Kirby said he had to prod them into attending ceremonies to mark HP's 50th anniversary.
Mr. Packard died in 1996, Mr. Hewlett in 2001.
HP bought the property in 2000, 13 years after the garage was designated California Registered Landmark No. 976. Mr. Kirby said he called the garage "the birthplace of Silicon Valley," which amused the company founders.
" 'The birthplace, really?' Bill Hewlett said to me," said Mr. Kirby, who retired from HP in 1989. " 'How were you able to stretch it to that?' "
Mr. Mancini doesn't know how much the company paid for the property, which now sits among multimillion-dollar homes in a tree-lined neighbourhood about 50 kilometres south of San Francisco. The site is just a 20-minute drive from another famous garage in Los Altos, where onetime HP employees Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple Computer Inc.
HP has no plans to turn the site into a tourist destination, but may use it for small meetings.
"Bill and Dave never cared much about the past," Mr. Kirby said, when asked what HP's founders might have thought of the renovation. "If you brought up something about past history, they'd just wave their hands and say 'That's all gone. Let's talk about the future.' "