Mr. William Reddington Hewlett

An engineer and the co-founder, with David Packard, of the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP). He was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan but moved to Oak Brook, Illinois, when he was two. Less than one year later, he moved to San Francisco at 3 years old. He attended Lowell High School and was accepted at Stanford University as a favor to his late father, Albion Walter Hewlett, who had died of a brain tumor in 1925. Hewlett received his Bachelor's degree from Stanford University in 1934, an MS degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1936, and the degree of Electrical Engineer from Stanford in 1939. He was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity during his time at Stanford and MIT. Hewlett attended classes taught by Fred Terman at Stanford and became acquainted with David Packard during his undergraduate work at Stanford. He and Packard began discussing forming a company in August 1937, and formally incorporated Hewlett-Packard Company on January 1, 1939. Also in 1939 he married Flora Lamson, and the couple eventually had five children: Eleanor, Walter, James, William and Mary. There are 12 grandchildren. He was President of HP from 1964 to 1977, and served as CEO from 1968 to 1978, when he was succeeded by John A. Young. He remained chairman of the executive committee until 1983, and then served as vice chairman of the board until 1987.