HP Garage
founding site of the company Hewlett-Packard, "birthplace of Silicon Valley"
The HP Garage is a private museum where the company Hewlett-Packard (HP) was founded. It is located at 367 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto, California. It is considered to be the "Birthplace of Silicon Valley". In the 1930s, Stanford University and its Dean of Engineering Frederick Terman began encouraging faculty and graduates to stay in the area instead of leaving California, and develop a high-tech region. HP founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard are considered the first Stanford students who took Terman's advice.
The garage has since been designated a California Historical Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Though not open for public tours, the property can be viewed from the sidewalk and driveway.
History
The home, originally designated as 367 Addison Avenue, was first occupied in 1905 by John Spencer, his wife Ione, and their two adult daughters. John Spencer became Palo Alto's first mayor in 1909. In 1918, the house was divided into two separate apartments, numbered 367 and 369.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “HP Garage” as founding site of the company Hewlett-Packard, "birthplace of Silicon Valley". Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as founding site of the company Hewlett-Packard, "birthplace of Silicon Valley". Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2720242. Authority coordinates are 37.443, -122.155. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1905, 1909 and 1918.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “HP Garage”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow HP Garage primary sources, HP Garage archive and Garage research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “HP Garage”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “HP Garage” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.