David Packard

Electrical engineer, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard (HP), born in Pueblo, Colorado, USA. He and his friend William Hewlett (1913–2001) were fellow-students at Stanford University under Fred Terman, and with his encouragement set up an electronics business in a garage in Palo Alto (1938), manufacturing a wide range of specialized measuring equipment. Their hand-held scientific calculator, the HP-35 (1972), was a best seller, and marked the start of personal computing. The garage is now a registered historical landmark, ‘The birthplace of Silicon Valley’.He was president of HP (1947–64) and then chief executive officer, with a spell as Deputy Secretary of Defence (1969–71).

In 1939, he and William Hewlett established their firm in Packard's garage with an initial capital investment of $538.

Packard served as Hewlett-Packard's president from 1947 to 1964, chief executive officer from 1964 to 1968, and chairman of the board from 1964 to 1968, and from 1972 to 1993. Nixon appointed Packard U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense under Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. Packard served until 1971, when he resigned and returned to Hewlett-Packard the next year as chairman of the board. In the 1970s and 1980s Packard was a prominent advisor to the White House on defense procurement and management.

From the early 1980s onward until his death, Packard dedicated much of his time and money to philanthropic projects. Prompted by their daughters Nancy and Julie, in 1978 Dave and Lucille Packard created the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation. The couple eventually donated $55 million to build the new aquarium, which opened in 1984 with Julie Packard as executive director. In 1987, Packard gave $13 million to create the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and the Packard Foundation has since provided about 90% of the institute's operating budget.

In 1964, the couple founded the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. In 1986, they donated $40 million towards building what became the Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University;

Upon his death, his will gave approximately $4 billion to the Packard Foundation, including large amounts of valuable real property in Los Altos Hills. All three Packard daughters sit on the Foundation's board of trustees.