Saddened today to hear of the passing of Stephen Hobday, who, along with Lilian Malt, created the Maltron keyboards. He was 98 years old. His resume is below.
I met him on several occasions when he and his wife Pam visited Perth in Western Australia, and found him to be an inventive, original and charming person.
Born in Wellington New Zealand. Son of Rev. R. H. Hobday MA. BD. Vicar of Brooklyn Parish. Secondary Ed. at Seddon Memorial Tech. Coll. in Auckland and then at New Plymouth Boys High School, to Ak. Uni. Entrance. Left NZ Feb. `35. Tea Estate Division trainee in Ceylon 35-36. Learnt to speak Tamil. UK Dec. 36. Lab. Assistant to Technical writer, Marcus Scroggie, "Cathode Ray" of Wireless World Magazine. Mid 37 Joined the staff of The Electrical Research Association at Perivale Laboratory, and Inst. of Electrical Engineers. Attended night classes at Regent St. Polytechnic in Radio Communication. Qualified Mid. 39. Called up late 39, posted to Min. of Aircraft Production Dept. RDC3, to give Ground Station wireless support to the RAF. Visited UK long distance Transmitting stations. Posted to Iceland in spring 42 to design Aerials for improved communications to trans-atlantic Aircraft. Invented 3-wire half wave dipole, that avoided need for careful setting-up. On return I was transferred to the Air Ministry and worked on a new manual for Signals Officers & Working parties. The "RAF Shortwave Communication Handbook" was published in Jan. 43. Prior to this, I was given the uniform & rank of Flight Lieut. and posted to Lagos in West Africa to visit all the coastal bases and help where possible. In mid. Jan. I was flown to Aswan and then by boat down the Nile to the Cairo base. Shortly after, a visit to Malta was needed to try and improve the range of the 500kc/s beacon used to guide aircraft to the island. This was found to be possible and enabled A/C from Gibralta to have a clear signal,
Most of 43 was occupied in visiting RAF local area bases in Palestine etc. followed by a visit to the Indian HQ in Delhi.
An extract from the history of Maltron on their website.
The Company was formed in 1977 to make fully ergonomic keyboards and has been doing so ever since. ... The company was founded by Stephen Hobday as a result of a meeting between himself and Lillian Malt when Stephen Hobday became intrigued by the issues surrounding the use of the Scholes Qwerty keyboard layout.
At the time Stephen was running Printed Circuit Design Ltd. (known as PCD), a small business in Farnborough Hampshire making electronic equipment. Stephen was interested in sourcing some new products to manufacture, and it just so happened that a local company had asked him if he would be interested in making them a computer keyboard.
This led to discussions with Farnborough Technical College about the design of the keyboard, and in turn to the meeting with keyboard training specialist Lillian Malt who had been closely concerned in the printing industry with the retraining of Linotype operators to use computer keyboards.
The first keyboard was shown at the News Tec exhibition, Brighton, in December 1976 and created a big stir and a lot of interest from potential clients. The Company, PCD Maltron Ltd. was formed to cater for the demand and offer the benefits of their unique product to a greater number of people.
One a kind.
Joe
