HP’s key historical archives destroyed in California’s wildfires

The collected archives of the founders of Hewlett Packard, William Hewlett and David Packard were lost in the wildfires that ravaged parts of California earlier this month, The Press Democrat newspaper reported. The company was founded in 1938 by the tech pioneers in a Palo Alto garage, with $538 in cash.

Over 100 boxes of the writings of the two men, correspondence, speeches and other items were housed in the two modular buildings that burned to the ground at the Fountaingrove headquarters of Keysight Technologies. The archives were in possession of Keysight, the world's largest electronics measurement company, which traces its roots to HP.

Keysight acquired the archives in 2014 when its business was split from Agilent Technologies which also is a HP spinoff.

The estimated worth of the archives in 2005 was nearly $2 million. The archives formed part of a wider company archive valued at $3.3 million. However, according to those with knowledge of the archives and the pioneering company's impact on the technology world the losses cannot be represented by a dollar figure.

''A huge piece of American business history is gone,'' said Brad Whitworth, who had been an HP international affairs manager with oversight of the archives three decades ago, www.pressdemocrat.com reported. He added Hewlett-Packard  had been at the forefront of an industry ''that has radically changed our world.''