Compaq Computer Corporation was an American personal computer company founded in 1982, and is now a brand name of Hewlett-Packard.
The company was formed by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto — former Texas Instruments senior managers. The name "COMPAQ" was derived from "Compatibility and Quality", as at its formation Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compatible computers.
At the same time as they began to dominate the server market, in the early 1990s Compaq entered the retail computer market with the Presario, and was one of the first manufacturers in the mid-1990s to market a sub-$1000 PC. In order to maintain the prices it wanted, Compaq became the first first-tier computer manufacturer to utilize CPUs from AMD and Cyrix. The price war resulting from Compaq's actions ultimately drove numerous competitors, most notably IBM and Packard Bell, from this market.
Once the largest supplier of computing systems in the world and previously regarded as perhaps the most reputable manufacturer of mid-range hardware, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it merged with Hewlett-Packard.
Before the merger, Compaq's ticker symbol was CPQ. This was melded with Hewlett-Packard's previous symbol (HWP) to create the current symbol of HPQ.
In late 2005, HPQ seemed to find its feet under the new leadership of Mark Hurd. At this same time Dell seemed to be faltering and HPQ took back the #1 sales position. Hurd separated the PC division from the imaging and printing vision. HP's PC segment has since been reinvigorated and now generates more revenue than the traditionally more profitable printers.
Most Compaq products have been re-branded with the HP nameplate, such as the company's market leading ProLiant server line, while the Compaq brand remains on only some consumer-orientated products, notably Compaq Presario PCs. HP's business computers line was deprecated in favour of the Compaq Evo line, which was rebranded HP Compaq. HP's Jornada PDAs were replaced by Compaq iPAQ PDAs, which were renamed HP iPAQ.
In May of 2007, HP in a press release announced a new logo for their Compaq Division to be placed on the new model Compaq Presarios.



HISTORY OF COMPUTERS - continued (PREV) (PAGE 1)
In 1939, John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry of Iowa State University developed the Antanasof-Berry Computer (ABC), a special purpose digital electronic calculator for solving systems of linear equations. (The original goal was to solve 29 simultaneous equations of 29 unknowns each, but due to errors in the card puncher mechanism the completed machine could only solve a few equations.) The design used over 300 vacuum tubes for high speed and employed capacitors fixed in a mechanically rotating drum for memory.

Though the ABC machine was not programmable, it was the first to use electronic circuits. ENIAC co-inventor John Mauchly examined the ABC in June 1941, and its influence on the design of the later ENIAC machine is a matter of contention among computer historians. The ABC was largely forgotten until it became the focus of the lawsuit Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, the ruling of which invalidated the ENIAC patent (and several others) as, among many reasons, having been anticipated by Atanasoff's work.
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