A highly successful manufacturer of electronic equipment, founded in 1938 by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, two electrical engineers recently graduated from Stanford. By the 1980s, it was well known for its electronic instruments, calculators, data-gathering equipment, medical equipment, and high-performance workstations. It is noted as the first manufacturer of a hand-held calculator and as a pioneer of the office laser printer. It was a major developer of software for use in its own products and has exploited this fact by marketing development tools for its own workstations. In 1999, the measurement, component, chemical analysis and medical systems part of the business were split off into a separate and independent company, Agilent Technologies. Hewlett-Packard retained its computing, printing, and imaging businesses and in 2002 it merged with Compaq.