The California address recognized as the birthplace of Hewlett-Packard and Silicon Valley's garage-startup legend is 367 Addison Avenue.
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard began working together in the late 1930s after meeting at Stanford University. In 1939, they formed Hewlett-Packard in a small garage behind a house rented by Packard and his wife, Lucille, in Palo Alto. Their first major product was an audio oscillator, an electronic test instrument developed with input from Stanford professor Frederick Terman.
The garage became a powerful symbol of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship: a small technical experiment growing into a major company. California later designated the property a historic landmark, and HP preserved the site as a private museum rather than a normal public attraction. The phrase “birthplace of Silicon Valley” is symbolic, since the region's technology industry developed through many companies, universities, defense projects, and investors.