Roy Clay grew up in the segregated town of Kinloch, Missouri, in a home without electricity or indoor plumbing. In 1951 he became the first Black graduate of Saint Louis University with a degree in mathematics, only to be told at his first job interview, “we have no jobs for professional Negroes.”
Clay taught himself to code and eventually wrote software at UC Berkeley's radiation lab modelling nuclear fallout patterns for the Department of Energy. That work caught the attention of David Packard, who personally recruited him in 1965 to found and lead Hewlett-Packard's new computer division.
Clay led the design of HP's first computer, the HP 2116A, writing much of its software himself. He later left HP to found Rod-L Electronics, became the first Black city councilman and later vice mayor of Palo Alto, and spent decades mentoring Black engineers into Silicon Valley.
- Lead developer of the HP 2116A, Hewlett-Packard's first computer
- First Black graduate of Saint Louis University, 1951
- First Black city councilman and later vice mayor of Palo Alto
- Inductee, Silicon Valley Engineering Council Hall of Fame
- Turn a rejection letter into the reason you build something bigger.. Denied a job for his race at McDonnell Aircraft, he went on to found HP's computer division.
- Open doors for others once you're inside the room.. He recruited Black engineers to HP from historically Black colleges.
- Build your company where your community lives.. He based Rod-L Electronics in East Palo Alto and hired locally.