Engineer Bob Barclay who worked on the early Concorde flight navigation team before founding a business in Fife, has died aged 93.
From its base in Glenrothes his firm, Spraymasters, painted car components for Honda, and Motorola mobile phones. A major customer was NCR, which at that time, manufactured ATMs for the world from Dundee.
Bob’s roots were in the Renfrewshire village of Elderslie. He was the fifth generation of Robert Barclays and he was born in the manager’s house of AF Stoddard carpet weavers where his father and grandfather worked.
The firm was known for the quality of its products and its carpets were ordered for the great ocean liners including the QE2.
Education
Bob attended Allan Glen’s School in Glasgow, then studied mechanical engineering at Glasgow University.
He participated enthusiastically in student life, nearly drowning in the Clyde as part of the rowing team and was rescued by the Humane Society.
He spent a sandwich year in partitioned Vienna, travelling there by train, and then his national service was carried out in the Royal Navy as an engineer on a destroyer patrolling the Mediterranean.
Back in civilian life he joined Elliot Automation, later Marconi Elliot, as part of the Blue Steel Rocket Missile trials team, and became an expert on inertial navigation based at Borehamwood.
He spent a period in Adelaide, Australia, overseeing flight tests, worked on the design of the hovercraft that still runs at Portsmouth, and was part of the early Concorde flight control system design team.
Bob met his future wife, Sheila, while working at Avro in Woodford, Greater Manchester, where Vulcan bomber missiles were tested. Aviation remained a shared lifelong interest and they always attended Leuchars air shows.
After moving back to Scotland in 1968 Bob found a way to combine his love of engineering and golf and set up his own business designing and building golf trolleys.
Industrialist
The trolleys were known as Barclay Carts with a logo that resembled a Barclaycard.
As the business grew, it moved premises to Glenrothes in the late 1980s and developed in a new direction after Veeder-Root asked to make use of the factory’s painting capability for tachograph discs.
This coincided with the boom time for Scottish electronics in what was known as Silicon Glen. The company was rebranded as Spraymasters and went on to supply Honda, Motorola and NCR.
At an age when many people might have thought of retiring, he opened a second factory with three spray painting robots to process high volume components.
His daughter, Amanda Barclay, said: “As a business owner he was respected by colleagues as a forward-thinking man of integrity and technical ability, who took a genuine interest in everyone he worked with. He became president of Fife Chamber of Commerce in the late 1990s.”
Retiring in 2000 allowed Bob more time for travel, opera and music concerts with Sheila and his family. He was a regular golfer at Elie with the seniors and was able to indulge his love of vintage cars.
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