Hp

Hp is an abbreviation with several widely used meanings across science, technology, and culture. In technology and business, HP most commonly refers to Hewlett-Packard, a major American technology company founded in 1939 by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard in Palo Alto, California. It began with electronic test equipment and expanded into personal computers, printers, and imaging products. In 2015, the company split into two separate entities: HP Inc., which handles personal computers and printers, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), which focuses on servers, storage, networking, and enterprise services. The HP brand remains widely recognized in consumer and business electronics.

In physics and engineering, hp denotes horsepower, a unit of power used to express the rate at which machines perform work. The most common definitions are the mechanical (short) horsepower, equal to 745.699872 watts, and the metric horsepower (often denoted PS), about 735.49875 watts. Horsepower originated in 18th-century Britain to compare engine power with that of draft horses, and it remains in use especially in automotive and industrial contexts, with values varying by standard.

In gaming and interactive media, HP stands for Health Points (also Hit Points), a measure of a character’s vitality or life. HP is commonly depleted by damage and replenished through healing actions, items, or rest, and it influences gameplay outcomes and strategy.

Other uses of the acronym appear in branding, laboratory names such as HP Labs, and various domain-specific contexts, but they share the common trait of being abbreviations tied to context.