ABSTRACT
Towards the end of his career, Hugh Stockbridge became known for, amongst other things, his keen interest in ergonomics standards, but he was not originally a ‘standards man’. In fact his individualistic style was very far from standard. In the days before the publication of Murrel’s book Ergonomics (Chapman and Hall, 1965), we had only one ‘cookbook’ published in the UK that could be seen as a standard. This was the 1960 publication from the MRC/RNPRC: Human Factors in Design and Use of Naval Equipment, intended for use by Royal Navy designers. Hugh, however, was ever the innovative experimenter in the grand tradition of Cambridge psychologists, and where ergonomics data was lacking, produced some of his own. An example was the designs for micro shape coded knobs, intended to be used on the old ‘Post office keys’, published internally at Famborough in 1957. His continuing interest in factors affecting the design of indicators and such controls was later reflected in a paper with Bernard Chambers in the Journal Ergonomics (Taylor and Francis, 1970).
