Answer: A Coin Toss

In 1939, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard founded a computer company in a Palo Alto garage that would go on to become one of the largest technology companies of the 20th century. The two young men, longtime friends and Stanford students, decided whether the company would be known as Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett with a coin toss. Hewlett won the toss.

Although known for calculators, computers, and printers, the first commercially successful Hewlett-Packard product was actually a very precise audio oscillator. Their first big client was none other than Walt Disney Productions, which purchased eight of their early model oscillators, the HP Model 200B, to use in certifying theaters’ Fantasound surround sound systems for their masterpiece Fantasia.