Cool Article on how HP started

Birth of the Cool (Company, That Is).

With a nut of $500 in cash, borrowed from Terman, plus a used Sears, Roebuck drill press, Hewlett-Packard swung into action in the small shed behind Packard's modest house at 367 Addison Ave. The company's first product, released in 1938, was an audio oscillator used for testing sound equipment. When the Walt Disney Company bought eight of them to develop the technically advanced movie Fantasia, HP was off-and-running.