Hailed as the Godfather of Silicon Valley, Roy Clay Sr. was a founding member of the computers’ division at Hewlett-Packard – the famous “HP” on the back of your laptop, the side of your printer, the shiny logo on the front of your camera.
Clay had taught himself to code in the 1950s, and was a programmer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory when HP’s co-founder David Packard noticed him and offered him a job. Back then, HP primarily dealt in semiconductors, but Clay’s involvement pushed the company leagues forward to where it is today. To start, he developed the hardware and wrote the software of the second 16-bit computer ever made, the HP 2116A.
In 1977, Clay left HP and started his own company, ROD-L Electronics, where he worked with several tech giants, including his former employers, to develop electrical safety testing equipment.
Clay was also the first African-American city councilman (and later Vice Mayor) of Palo Alto, California.
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