User:Smartwater03/sandbox

Kathy Humphry

Early Life

Kathy Humphry is from Liverpool and was born in 1944. Humphry stated that she had always had an interest in Maths, but instead pursued Psychology and Economics in college. She graduated from the University of Saint Andrews and quickly became involved in the tech world. Humphry became known for her work with computers.

Careers

Humphry was very talented when it came to computers. She would use computers at her first job which was with telephones and cables, She had to learn how to understand the internal and external uses of a computer. She moved to the USA to work for Blue Cross/Blue Shield mostly for personal pleasure, but was still able to use her knowledge of computers to her advantage. She joined when they were in the final stages of testing their product but she was able to see the effects in a small way because she also left the job as quickly as she came. When she worked for the university her title was changed as she worked in the Student Computing Service. She would help connect students' personal computers to university computers. When she started working at Edinburgh University that’s when things picked up. She joined the Computer Science department and was doing data transfers between computers. She learned IMP, Implementation Language while being mainly associated with the university. She finally moved onto Xilinx, where she was lured in with the idea of FPGA, or Field Programmable Gate Array. She was an admin here and would use her knowledge of 3 programming languages when needed.

Kathy Humphry was most known for her work with computers and being able to operate with them. She started her career being a telephone switching technician, meaning she would install, maintains, troubleshoots, and repairs the cabled devices present at the client or customer network site. Without her, the companies would not be able to be successful. She said she loved challenges showing she was hardworking because she never let a challenge go unsolved. She used skills she had from this job to help her in her jobs with the universities, she would move on to demonstrate to students how to use certain pieces of technology in detail. She finished her career strong, learning a few programming languages and using her skills to help her do well. She was able to adapt to every situation she was put into, even if she didn’t have the full knowledge to be successful. Her personal enjoyment of Math influenced her to move into the stem, and she enjoyed her life and career path thoroughly. Even though it was hard, and she was unsure sometimes, her greeted pleasure was being able to solve problems that no one else could.

Education


 * University of Saint Andrews

Work


 * Telephone Switching Technician
 * Telephone Switching Technician for Blue Cross/Blue Shield in the USA
 * Friden, Singer
 * Computing Officer for Edinburgh University
 * Xilinx

References

https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Kathy_Humphry#Working_at_Edinburgh_University