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However, this is not just any old garage, but the site from which founders David Hewlett and William Packard launched their legendary company back in 1938. The detached garage was made a California State Historical Landmark in 1987 and when the garage and its cottage came on the market in August this year, the company snapped it up.

As if $1.7m wasn't enough, HP is to plough more cash into restoring the property so that it can use it as a base to develop a product for testing sound equipment.

Carly Fiorina, CE for HP, promised in a television advert that the company that began in a garage would return to the values of a garage. In this particular instance, a very high value indeed.