The pre-history of Hewlett Packard: David Packard in Schenectady

"In August 1937 David did something unimaginable. He took an unpaid leave from his relatively secure job at GE, packed his belongings in his car, and headed west..." "Bezos founded Amazon in late 1994 on a cross-country road trip from New York..."

It's mentioned in the article but, "The HP Way" is actually a decent read.

HP, later Agilent, now Keysight used to have an excellent museum at their headquarters which is currently in Santa Rosa CA that included at lot of the original equipment. Unfortunately most of it was lost to the recent fires.