Roy Clay
American computer scientist
Roy Lee Clay Sr. (August 22, 1929 – September 22, 2024) was an African American computer scientist and inventor. He was a founding member of the computer division at Hewlett-Packard, where he led the team that created the HP 2116A 16-bit minicomputer. He was Chief Executive Officer of ROD-L Electronics, an electrical-safety test equipment manufacturer.
Early life and education
Clay was born on August 22, 1929, in Kinloch, Missouri. At the time, Kinloch was the oldest African-American community that was incorporated in Missouri. During his summer holidays, he worked as a gardener in Ferguson, but was encouraged by the local police to leave the majority white town. Despite experiencing racism throughout his childhood, Clay's mother told him, "you will face racism the rest of your life, but don't ever let that be a reason why you don't succeed".
Clay attended Douglass High School, a segregated school, and eventually was awarded a scholarship to study mathematics at Saint Louis University (SLU). While at SLU, Clay wanted to become a baseball player.
“Roy Clay” enters the record as american computer scientist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Clay, American and computer can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Roy Clay” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Clay, American and computer provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q85858638. VIAF identifies the subject as 25169254412092702339. The Library of Congress control number is no2023088140. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1929 and 2024.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roy Clay” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.