Colin Barber 1934–2006
Continuing the series of essays written by my late father, Rowley Atterbury, about the people that he felt had contributed to the graphic arts during his lifetime. Originally written in 1990 and revised and updated in A Good Idea at the Time, a History of Westerham Press published in 2010 by Hurtwood Press.
Colin Barber
In the late 1950s and early 1960s the printing trade was showing signs of change. There was a feeling that the book was becoming an inefficient means of communication where information retrieval was concerned.
Colin Barber with no background in printing, pioneered, first in in the USA and then in this country, the application of data processing to type-setting with the aim and idea of making information in book form more readily available. Once a book had been keyboarded into the computer memory he believed that nobody need every keyboard that book again! Information could be sorted, indexed and re-assembled as required.
Colin Barber had been what was then termed a ‘brain drain’. A mathematical physicist, he was first working in North America with A. V. Roe Canada on stress calculations for the projected Avro Arrow aircraft. When this factory was to be closed Colin Barber moved to the East Coast and Mid-west of the USA. Thereafter Colin worked in the USA for SKF, Philadelphia as Senior Research Engineer, Honeywell, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, as an Analog/digital Systems Engineer and then RCA, Cherry Hill, New jersey, as a Physical Scientist.
In 1964 came the London Conference where, amongst other things, the Macintosh brothers were booed (a great British tradition to denigrate all innovators except financial ones!). Colin Barber was a speaker at the Conference.
Colin Barber was then persuaded to join Rocappi UK.
A deal was done with the unions whereby Rocappi Limited would train union members in return for the non-union ‘teachers’ being given full union cards. This led to Victoria Litzinger – so sadly no longer with us – later to become Mrs Colin Barber – holding a full union card. Viki played a most significant role and any history of early computer assisted type-setting development that does not mention her contribution is flawed.
Viki Litzinger
The typographical standards of Rocappi typesetting were based on an amended version of Hans Schmoller’s Penguin rules, since it was felt that computer intervention should not be allowed to cause any lowering of typographical standards! Monotype, Monophoto, Photon, Linofilm or Linotype tape output from Rocappi produced work indistinguishable from the finest conventional setting.
It was felt that this revolution, probably the first major one since Gutenberg would take printing into the communications industry and would make books and information more readily available with its many spin-offs.
L–R Lord Weidenfeld, Viki Barber, Margaret Drabble & Colin Barber
In the end Rocappi was shut. The financial experts said there was no future in the idea! Part of the team went to the USA. Colin Barber and John Robbins remained here to form C. R. Babrer and Partners and continued to create the basis of so much of the computer setting we take for granted today. Colin was a great contributor and indefatigable hard worker and like many innovators could not be said to suffer fools gladly.
