From a 1979 HP calendar

Editor's Note:

By the time the Microwave Division of the 1960s was ready to split, HP had gotten pretty good at it, having moved out Loveland Division and the Colorado Springs Division. In 1969, I had already moved myself out of Microwave to HP Associates, to lead a small group building light emitting diodes, leading to the 15 tiny digits for the HP-35.

But I recall one site selection team looking at Albuquerque, and got my interest because I had worked there for 3 years testing atom bombs at Sandia, which was the main technology center of town. The University of New Mexico was a pretty good engineering school. But the story came back that the committee had used a helicopter for an overview, and hit one of their occasional sand storms, with some accompanying rain, for a wet sand blast. It's not too surprising that Albuquerque didn't make the cut.

SANTA ROSA STORY

Hi, John,

I recently read the article in the HP REC Newsletter about the 50th Reunion celebration and it brought to mind a story of the land acquisition I'd like to share.

Dave Weibel and I moved to Santa Rosa in 2008 to live at Varenna at Fountaingrove, a Continuing Care Retirement Community. Varenna is located right across Fountaingrove Parkway from Keysight Technologies which is, of course, the site of the original HP Santa Rosa Division. It was completed in 2008 and named for the town on Lake Como, Varenna, Italy because of the architecture of the facilities.

You may have seen that Dave passed away a couple of years ago, but while he was here he loved to tell the story of how HP got to Santa Rosa. As I remember his story, Dave, Doug Chance and someone else (I've forgotten that detail) at Microwave Div. were tasked with visiting Santa Rosa and recommending whether or not it would be a good place for HP to expand. It was sometime in the late 60's or early 70's. They visited several times and decided that Santa Rosa met the requirements HP had for expansion (airport, Santa Rosa Junior College, etc.).

Once the decision was made to come here the search began for property to acquire in order to construct a new plant. A very large property at US101 (no freeway yet) and the Round Barn extending east to Brush Creek Road had not been developed and seemed ideal. However, the Santa Rosa realtors told the survey group that the owner was very fond of the property and would "never sell." The group had walked around some of the property and noticed rolling hills with many live oak trees some of which were tagged with information on their origin; there was also a small lake on the north west side.

The property owner was very concerned about a "smokestack industrial plant" being built, but eventually visited Dave Packard in Palo Alto who convinced him to sell about 200 acres of the approximately 1,500 acre property with the promise that the buildings would be invisible from the road (Fountaingrove was a dirt road then) and not damage the environment nor detract from the value of remainder of the owner's land.

Fast forward to 2008 when Dave and I moved into a casita (single family home) at Varenna where the northwest view from our living room windows is of a small lake. Dave marveled at living in a place he had explored so many years ago.

--Glenne Harding