User:Barkercoder

Male aged 74 living on the South Coast of England. Using Wiki is completely new to me and a big learning curve as I have had no training in computer science. I am learning by reading the instructions that are not very user friendly. Perhaps there is a reason for this. R H Barker R H Barker (Dr Ronald Hugh Barker 1915 - 2015) PhD, BSc, FIEE, FinstP, Ceng, FIMechE. Who's Who Most notable as inventor of Barker code or Barker sequence, a means of checking the synchronization and framing of received data. This is the backbone to virtually all data transmissions within (and out of) our world today. Virtual all data transmissions (including Wikipedia) require the use of a Barker code for its correct transmission to the receiving computer. A sequence of binary digits has very little meaning unless the significance of the individual digits is known.

== Personal Details == Roy Barker (as he was known) was a gifted scientist and committed member of Institute of Engineering and Technology for over 60 years.  Born in Dublin his early education years were disrupted by his father's frequent periods of unemployment and moves between Dublin and England. His father Ernest William Barker born 1880 in Harpenden (1881 census) found it difficult to find work as a stained glass window artist and traveled to do so often staying in lodgings that were grim. For much of the time Roy and his mother Linda Annie Taylor (1885- 1944) a school teacher, lived with her parents in Thomas Street, Heath and Reach, Bedfordshire. Heath being was the family home for several generations. The Taylor's were also extremely poor but despite this were very supportive. Matters weren't helped when his father died in 1929. At age 13 Barker he was interviewed by the headmaster, Mr F Fairbrother of a new school, Cedars now Cedars Upper School, Leighton Buzzard. This was followed by an entrance examination.  Considerable allowance must have been made for the fact that he had come back from Ireland. He was duly admitted and stayed there until 1934. In the VIth form his main subjects were chemistry, physics and mathematics and also played in the 1st XV Rugby team. It was whilst at Cedars that Barker took an interest in things electrical and radio, building his first crystal set using a cats whisker and three valve radios. In those days one had to make some of the electrical components including coils and loudspeakers. Barker excelled at mathematics and won a scholarship to University College Hull . However only part of the fees was covered and Barker was still heavily dependent upon both Linda and Grace, Linda Taylor's sister (1887-1998). At Hull Barker gained a 1st class honours degree in physics awarded by London University 1954 Faculty of Science London University.

Early Career

Jobs for scientists were not difficult to find and in 1941 Barker joined STC Standard Telephones and Cables North Woolwich, in their thermionic valve department designing dental X-Ray tubes and equipment. After a bombing raid over Woolwich he cycled back to Heath where he met his wife to be Wendy Emily Hunt (1917-1998) who came from South Croydon. STC's valve manufacture had plans to move from Woolwich to Illminster, Somerset. He resigned as his work on X-ray tubes was far from satisfactory being unrelated to the war effort. During the war Barker had a reserved occupation. He took up a new and much more interesting post as a temporary experimental officer at the Signals Experimental Establishment (SEE) initially on Woolwich Common as it was soon moved to Warnham Court, Horsham. Here he assisted with the design of Wireless Set No.19 to be used in tanks etc. From there Barker went on to design Walkie-Talkie sets for jungle use. In 1943 he married Wendy Hunt at St Augustines church in South Croydon. SSE was subsequently renamed Signals Research and Development Establishment (SRDE) and brought within the Ministry of Supply. Staff were moved to Christchurch in the summer of 1943. The UK guided weapons program came into being in 1944. The first experimental system was named LOPGAP, acronym of Liquid Oxygen Propelled Guided Anti-aircraft Projectile. Barker was given responsibility for the telemetry equipment. This project had top priority so it was easy to make rapid progress. Initial firings were at Ynyslas in Wales prior to construction of special guided weapons range at the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency site, Aberporth, Wales.

Post War Career

At the end of the war Barker was appointed as a senior scientific officer. He took over speech cryptography, the technique for the encryption of speech was to first encode digitally the speech waveform (in much the same way as was used later for digital recording of music. and to then scramble the stream of binary digits by multiplying it (bit by bit) by a second stream produced synchronously in a code generator. The latter was a really special purpose digital computer programmed to produce a pseudorandom sequence. This work brought Barker into contact with a lot of early work on computers in England and the US. Still at SRDE Barker had a team of twelve scientists as the work on applications of digital electronics had been extended to include gun fire-control , servo systems and communication by pulse code modulation (digital speech). Two aspects of his work became well known. The first being z-transform method of anylising the behavior of such systems (see IEE monograph No43, July 1952; the second was a method known (using what is now known as aBarker sequence or Barker code of synchronising digital communication systems. The latter have been used in space communications such as the Galileo Mission. A Dictionary of Computing defines a Barker sequence. The original publication was entitled "group Synchronisation of Binary Digital Systems" In April 1954 Barker was promoted to Senior Scientific Officer, this was the end of his personal research and the beginnings of an administrative career. The new job was Assistant Director to Ministry of Supply, New Oxford Street, London