Did you know that bad EMC Engineering could kill you?

A massive explossion and fire on the USS Forestall was caused when RF energy from an aircraft radar coupled into an imporperly sheild cable connector on another aircraft causing the launch of a missle on the flight deck of this Vietnam era aircraft carrier in 1967.   This fatal tradgedy helped focus the United States Government and the young electronics industry on the importance of good EMC engineering.

 Henry Ott spoke about this tradgedy and other reasons why you should be concerned about EMC in his keynote address at the 2014 IEEE EMC Symposium.  The listed reasons:

• To meet the requirements
• To keep the customer happy
• EMC problems can have hazardous consequences (see above)

Ott's address gives a clear over view of EMC, it's history and a glimpse of what the future may bring.  It turns out that good engineering for good products is by nature good in it's EMC compliance.  Ott urges manufactures both large and small to do more pre-compliance testing in house by purchasing and learning affordable test equipment and proceedures so that they can master common fixes and engineer better prior to EMC testing.