Velma Elizabeth Huskey (''

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...

'' Roeth; October 8, 1917 – January 16, 1991) was a pioneer in early computing and author of several important papers on the history of computing.

Early life and education

Velma Elizabeth Roeth was born October 8, 1917, in

Houston, Ohio Houston ( ) is an unincorporated community in northern Loramie Township, Shelby County, Ohio, United States. It has a post office, a dollar general, and a grain elevator. The transmitter site of WHIO-FM (formerly WPTW-FM, WCLR and WDPT respec ...

. She was the daughter of German-American farmers Frederick William Roeth and Clara Matilda Fessler. She attended Houston High School, where she wrote and edited the school news column published in ''

The Piqua Daily Call The ''Piqua Daily Call'' was an American daily newspaper that was consolidated with the ''Troy Daily News'' in April 2019 to form '' Miami Valley Today'', which is published Tuesday through Friday in Troy, Ohio. Its Sunday edition is called the ''M ...

.'' She entered

Ohio University Ohio University is a Public university, public research university in Athens, Ohio. The first university chartered by an Act of Congress and the first to be chartered in Ohio, the university was chartered in 1787 by the Congress of the Confeder ...

in 1937. After marrying

Harry Huskey Harry Douglas Huskey (January 19, 1916 – April 9, 2017) was an American computer design pioneer. Early life and career Huskey was born in Whittier, in the Smoky Mountains region of North Carolina and grew up in Idaho. He received his bachel ...

in 1939, Velma Huskey earned a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

in English from

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

in 1942. There she was inducted into

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

Career

She lived in Britain for a year after the Second World War. Huskey worked as an information specialist for the

National Bureau of Standards The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...

from 1948 to 1952. She became a technical writer at the Institute for Numerical Analysis at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

. Along with her husband, she was an editor for the ''

IEEE Transactions on Computers ''IEEE Transactions on Computers'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of computer design. It was established in 1952 and is published by the IEEE Computer Society. The editor-in-chief is Ahmed Louri, David and Marily ...

.'' She traveled to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

for the 1959 technical delegation in computers, paying her own way while her husband represented the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

. In 1967 the Huskeys moved to

Santa Cruz, California Santa Cruz (Spanish for "Holy Cross") is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, in Northern California. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 62,956. Situated on the northern edge of Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz is a pop ...

. Huskey was a biographer of

Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (''née'' Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the A ...

. She studied letters in the Byron and Lovelace collection of the

Bodleian Libraries The Bodleian Libraries are a collection of 28 libraries that serve the University of Oxford in England, including the Bodleian Library itself, as well as many other (but not all) central and faculty libraries. As of the 2016–17 year, the librari ...

at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

during summer visits. Her writings appeared in the ''

IEEE Annals of the History of Computing The ''IEEE Annals of the History of Computing'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the IEEE Computer Society. It covers the history of computing, computer science, and computer hardware. It was founded in 1979 by the AFIPS ...

.''

Personal life

She married

in 1939 and they had four children, Harry Douglas Jr, Carolyn Louise, Roxanne Louise and Linda Louise. She was a member of the Messiah Lutheran church in Santa Cruz.

Death

Velma E. R. Huskey died January 16, 1991, in

Miami, Florida Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

. She was buried at Santa Cruz Memorial Park in

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Huskey, Velma 1917 births 1991 deaths Ohio State University alumni