Barber Greene

Barber-Greene was founded in 1916 by American mechanical engineers Harry H. Barber and William B. Greene. It was a company that was formed to sell standardized material-handling machines to mechanize small manual tasks in an economical way. Though the company began by offering conveyors and bucket loaders, it is best known for its contributions to the asphalt field. In 1959, the company went public and was sold to Astec in 1985.

On November 15, 1930 in Aurora, Illinois Harry Barber made a sketch of a revolutionary new machine that was to become the Asphalt paver. Harry asked a patent attorney named W.R. Chambers to come from Chicago and see this new machine. This eventually became the beginning of the development of the modern asphalt paver. Today, there is an entire industry that has been developed from this invention. The machine featured mixing and then placing asphalt in a single operation. This was exhibited for the first time at the 1931 Road Show in St. Louis. Barber realised that the mixing and placing operations needed to be separated and the mixing section became the line of Barber Greene asphalt plants and the placing section became the Barber Greene paver line.

The early pavers used screw conveyers to distribute the mix in front of a screed that tamped the mix. This process meant that the asphalt was suitable for coarse-graded mixes, however on dense-graded mixes that were common on city streets the machine experienced problems including surface imperfections. In 1933, Barber's son Ashley (Ash) joined the company and in the same year the independent floating screed was developed. This screed along with the tamper bar that permitted uniform material density of the finished surface were the two key features that allowed the machine to become successful. Early pavers had a hopper which material was dumped into and spread by an auger. The floating screed was supported by runners that travelled on the prepared base material.

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