Meet Educator Henry W. Ott
President/Principal Consultant, Henry Ott Consultants
ICM: Mr. Ott, would you share with us a bit about your professional background?
Henry: After undergraduate school I went into the Air Force for four years, and was assigned to the Air Research and Development Command at Eglin AFB, Florida, where I was involved in flight-testing of armament systems on new aircraft. After the Air Force, I worked at Bell Labs in Whippany, NJ as a product design engineer. In 1963, I obtained my Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering. At Bell Labs I was a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff and a consultant on EMC. In 1988, after 30 years at Bell Labs, I left to start Henry Ott Consultants, an EMC training and consulting organization.
While at Bell Labs, I wrote my first book “Noise Reduction Techniques in Electronic Systems,” which was published by John Wiley & Sons in 1976. A second edition of the book was published in 1988, just after I left Bell Labs, and remained in print until 2009. In 2009, my second book “Electromagnetic Compatibility Engineering” was published also by John Wiley.
At Bell Labs, I was involved in designing sensitive low-level analog electronics that had to work in an electrically noisy environment. At this time, this was the mid 60s, I discovered that there was very little information available on dealing with noise and interference in electronics. The universities taught nothing about the subject, and there was very little literature available pertaining to the subject.
As a result I began to educate myself on the subject, which led to me teaching a course on the subject within Bell Labs. The course notes eventually led to the Noise Reduction Techniques book. The book got me known outside of Bell Labs and I began teaching continuing-education courses on the subject, on my own time, for various companies and organizations outside of Bell Labs. This eventually lead to my leaving Bell Labs and doing full-time EMC consulting and training.
My success has come from my ability to take a complex subject, such as EMC, and explain in it a simple understandable way both in person and in print. “Noise Reduction Techniques in Electronics Systems” has been referred to, by many as the “Bible on EMC.” My new book “Electromagnetic Compatibility Engineering” received the “2009 PROSE Award,” from the Association of American Publishers for the most professional and scholarly book published that year in the category of Engineering and Technology.
The majority of the EMC training classes presented by Henry Ott Consultants are done in-plant for specific clients. However, I do try to offer at least two public EMC seminars each year. This allows engineers at companies that do not have enough people interested in EMC to justify an in-plant seminar to receive EMC training. These public seminars are usually offered in the spring and the fall, one in the eastern US, and one in the western US.
The 2012 spring public seminar will be held in Atlanta, GA area April 17-19.
The fall 2012 public seminar is not yet finalized, but Denver, CO area is being considered.
More information is available on the Henry Ott Consultants website (www.hottconsultants.com), both on the public and in-plant EMC courses.
These public offerings are 3-day EMC seminars directed towards electrical engineers. However, mechanical engineers, systems engineers, regulatory compliance engineers, technicians, and others who need a working knowledge of EMC principles will also benefit from these seminars. The participants obtain the knowledge necessary to design electronic equipment that is compatible with the electromagnetic environment, and in compliance with national and international EMC.
