The Birthplace of Silicon Valley Is a Palo Alto Garage [Retromodo]

This is the Palo Alto, CA garage where two young Stanford engineering grads named Bill Hewlett and David Packard started building what would one day become the world's largest PC manufacturer. In 2000, HP turned it into a museum.

Hewlett and Packard rented the garage way back in 1938 to build audio oscillators with a new, more efficient design, a business that quickly expanded into all means of electronic hardware (and later, software) and effectively put that stretch of northern California on its way to becoming Silicon Valley.

In 2000, HP bought the garage and its corresponding house where the company's founders lived while they worked, and turned it into a museum of sorts. They recreated the garage exactly how it was at the time, with the same decor and audio oscillator parts strewn about. It's not open to the public, since it's just a house on a residential street in Palo Alto (and HP is nothing if not neighborly), but it's definitely someplace we'd like to take a look at. Love them or hate them, HP is top dog in the computer hardware world, and it's a treat to see how it all began. [CNET]