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Personality Profile |
Bill Duff, Associate Editor |
Don Bush was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1942. He graduated from the Speed Scientific School of the University of Louisville with a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering Degree in 1965, and received the Master of Electrical Engineering Degree in 1974. He attended his first IEEE EMC Symposium in Washington DC in 1967, and has been an AIEE/IRE/IEEE member since a student in college.
Don was recently honored at the 2001 IEEE International Symposium on EMC in Montréal. He received an Honorary Life Membership in the EMC Society and a Certificate of Technical Achievement for “Contributions to the Development of Spread Spectrum Computer Clock Technology.” Don says, “The Honorary Life Membership in the EMC Society is my most cherished award.”
Upon graduation from college, Don started his career in the IBM Office Products Division (OPD) in Lexington, Kentucky. His new boss introduced him to the then-under-construction EMC Laboratory and demonstrated the brand-new Empire/Singer NF-105 EMI receiver. Having been an amateur radio operator, and by chance listing this on his resume, his fate was sealed.
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Donald R. Bush |
TEMPEST was the buzzword in 1965, and the lab was being formed to develop products for the government that complied with these taxing requirements. Don worked on two commercial TEMPEST products, one the inertia-motor Selectric¨ Typewriter, which was sold for more than 25 years. The other product, because of political and antitrust issues, was transferred to the Federal Systems Division of IBM. In the late ’60’s the IBM OPD product line was becoming more electronic, and development personnel were starting to recognize the occurrence of strange phenomena. Don’s work thus shifted from TEMPEST measurements to commercial EMC.
At this time, he met Clayton Paul, who had joined the faculty at the University of Kentucky. They were the only two members of the IEEE EMC Society in Kentucky, and they soon became fishing buddies as well as colleagues.
Don became involved in ESD simulation and commercial product support in 1968. Early customer problems with new electronic products caused this EMC mission change. In 1969, the Justice department under the Johnson administration decided to sue IBM. This caused the TEMPEST work to slow down, but the commercial EMC problems were immune to politics.
IBM had developed a new line of magnetic-belt dictation equipment, which used silicon transistors instead of the antiquated, leaky, germanium predecessors. During one of the early field tests, a development engineer was checking a unit in his hotel room in Chicago before taking it to the customer. When listening, the unit appeared to have music recorded on the media. After removing the media, music was still playing! Don then packed an EMC-25, antennas, and various suppression components and headed for Chicago to inspect IBM OPD’s first radiated immunity problem. The radiated field from the FM radio station was measured, (this was a great deal different from measuring TEMPEST microvolts) and the location of the station relative to the hotel was noted.
Many other broadcast stations were measured so that experience with this new problem could be studied. Many other obstacles had to be overcome. The biggest challenge in hardening these products was the hardening of an audio circuit rather than a digital circuit. No large amplifiers were available and antenna calibrations for generating fields had not yet been thought of, so these new challenges had to be addressed.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) started looking at the interference potential of computers in the mid-Ô70’s, and the entire IBM EMC community was involved in studying this very critical issue. The OPD division developed and manufactured the smallest and lowest priced of IBM’s products, and Don was involved in their EMI measurement and suppression. These were essentially the “consumer products” of IBM. Virtually all of these products connected to 120 VAC outlets or were battery powered. Don led and originated several of the 120 V powerline conducted EMI studies and participated in many of the EMI studies directed by IBM corporate headquarters, such as antenna proximity to Data Processing Systems.
Over the years, IBM developed many internal EMC standards and design criteria, as did most other large companies. All were first developed empirically in order to generate a very quick response to a customer’s problem, then a great deal of analysis was used to generate a permanent measurement criteria and standard. Don was named EMC coordinator to deal with the unique product line of the OPD division and represented the low-end EMC issues in all corporate standards meetings.
When the FCC first published the Part 15 Computing Device Rules in 1979, the second IBM product to receive FCC Certification was developed and produced by IBM OPD Lexington. Don generated this and many more certification reports.
Don was named Corporate Standards Project Authority for Electromagnetic Susceptibility in 1985, and held this post until 1991, when IBM decided to spin off what had become the PC printer and typewriter division. Lexmark was born. Don was a Senior Engineer and technical team leader of the Lexmark EMC laboratory. Lexmark joined the Information Technology Industries Council (ITIC) and Don was appointed EMC/ESC-5 representative.
He has written eleven papers that have been presented at EMC symposia around the world, has presented EMC experiments, and chaired symposia sessions as well. He holds a patent on Spread Spectrum Clock Generation, which is assigned to Lexmark International.
Don retired from IBM/Lexmark in 1996 and founded dBi Corporation. Currently he provides EMC services such as seminars, EMI/EMC measurements, and design consultation. He is a registered professional engineer, a NARTE certified EMC engineer, and is currently a member of the IEEE EMC Society Board of Directors.
He has been married to his wife Sandra since college days, and she has been at-tending EMC symposia whenever possible since 1974! They have three children and three grandchildren who all live within an hour’s drive of their old Kentucky home. Don can be reached at d.bush@ieee.org EMC
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