That level of old, but not HP. It was actually the first company to exist off of 100% software sales/licensing revenue. (Not hardware sales, with accompanying software, like IBM in those days.)
Does anyone know whether HP had anything like 20% time in its earlier days? I've never heard that they did, but now that you mention it it does seem like the kind of thing that HP might have done.
Old-school HP was so awesome it would have made Google look like a Communist labor camp. As long as you did what they paid you to do, your time basically was your own, along with a key to the company stockroom.
I remember reading that Woz used his time at HP to invent the first Apple computer. (Then HP decided that microcomputers were a silly waste of time so they gave Woz back the rights to it.)
