DAVID A. WESTON
David Weston Born 22nd Of September 1942, Is An Electromagnetic Compatibility Engineer And Author.
In his memoir From a Hod to an Odd EM Wave, David A. Weston invites readers into a vivid, deeply personal memoir that weaves together a lifetime of engineering innovation, global experiences, and unforgettable human encounters. From humble beginnings carrying bricks on a construction site in post-war England to groundbreaking work in electromagnetic compatibility, Weston’s career has spanned continents and disciplines. Each chapter is rich with insight, humor, and resilience. (from IEEE life member magazine)
Weston went to a Secondary Modern school in England. He was in the middle of three streams. The top stream was non-academic, the middle was even less academic, and the lowest was definitely not academic. None of the pupils had ever been promoted to the grammar school, which was for those who were academic. The education psychologist Cyril Burt believed, as many did, that the children of working-class parents had a lower IQ than the upper class, and he devised a test to prove this. Unfortunately, the test proved that their IQs were similar. He repeated the test with the same result. He believed in his bias so strongly that he skewed his data and came up with the result that he wanted, resulting in a fraud. However, researchers examined his work, including his closest friend Leslie Hearnshaw, who wanted to write Burk's biography, but found that the allegation against Burk was correct. It shows how good Burt's IQ test was that these differences were ignored in the test. New research has shown that intelligence is not frozen at birth. There have been many calls to abolish Grammar and Secondary Modern schools.
Indeed, the children of working-class parents often go to the Secondary Modern and upper-class children to grammar. There may be many reasons for this all l of which are described in his memoir From a hod to an odd EM wave.
What Weston really wanted to do was to work as a radio and TV repairman. He was fascinated by how the devices worked. He had taught himself to build an AM radio when he was 15. Even after showing it to his parents and teachers, though, they still didn’t think he was smart enough to pursue his chosen career, he says.
The school advisor suggested he got a job on a construction site carrying heavy loads of building materials in a hod, a three-sided wooden trough. As an 86 lb weakling the experience convinced him he wasn’t cut out for manual labor..
Weston was hired as a technician with the Medical Research Council’s neuropsychiatric research unit in Carshalton. The institution researches the biological causes of mental illness. His manager was interested in learning about advances in medical electronics and eagerly shared his knowledge with Weston.
One of Weston’s tasks was to build an electroencephalography (EEG) calibrator to measure responses from a patient’s brain activity. To diagnose clinical depression the measure of the evoked response in the brain was the only reliable indicator. Weston designed and built an EEG calibrator used to measure this evoked response.
To diagnose a brain tumor the methods used at the time, before MRI machines were developed—involved monitoring the patient’s speech and coordination, followed by taking a biopsy, which was not without danger, He used an ultrasonic transmitter and receiver to measure the time of transmission to the midline in the brain to determine whether the person had a tumor. If the midline had shifted, it would indicate the presence of a tumor, and a biopsy would be performed to confirm it.
Two heart rending personal experiences whilst working at the MRC were as follows:
Next to the MRC was a hospital and in the hospital was a ward of children with shortened limbs. These children were adversely affected after their mothers had taken Thalidomide during pregnancy.
The children were confined to the ward although perfectly healthy. Some of their parents visited but never took them out, for others they never got visited. During one visit a little boy asked if I would take him out in my three wheel bubble car ,just the right size for him. There was no doctor only a nurse on duty and she agreed as long as I did not let him out of the car. He saw a Wimpy restaurant (like a McDonalds) and asked to go in for a hamberger. This we did with no adverse reaction from the patrons. It was later found that these children were accepted by the general public and so were released from their prison hospital.
The other sad story was of a woman confined to one of the mental hospitals I visited. Her parents had committed her when she was a girl, as she had had a child out of wedlock , despite being mentally healthy on entry. One of the more humane doctors found this out and arranged for volunteers to take her out shopping, to go to the library and open a bank account. They then found her an apartment to live in outside of the hospital. Instead of being bitter at having spent almost the whole of her life in a mental institution she said “I have never been happier
Weston earned his City and Guilds Of London Institute radio and TV certificate in 1965, The lack of higher academic degrees did not hold him back, though. He went on to become an expert in electromagnetic interference (EMI) and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC). EMC is the capacity for electronic devices to work correctly in a shared electromagnetic environment without causing interference or suffering from it in nearby devices or signals. EMI is when devices suffer from interference.
leaving the research facility a year later to join Divcon (now part of Oceaneering International), a commercial diving company based in London that developed deep-sea helium diving bells. Weston helped design a waterproof handheld communication device for divers that could withstand the high pressure in diving bells, the open-bottom pressurized chambers that transported them underwater.
Weston then moved to Hamburg, Germany, in 1969 to work for Plath, an electronics manufacturer. He was tasked, along with other engineers from England, to design a servo control loop.
“Unfortunately it oscillated so badly when first being turned on that it shook itself to bits,” he says.
He left to work as a senior engineer at Dr. Staiger Mohilo and Co. (now part of Kistler), in Schorndorf, Germany. It manufactured torque sensors, force transducers, and specialized test stand systems. Weston designed a process control computer. He says his boss told him that the controller had to work in close proximity to—and from the same power source as—a nearby machine without interfering with it or being interfered by it.
“I was thus introduced to the idea of electromagnetic compatibility,” he says.
After three years, he left to join the Siemens Mobility train group in Braunschweig, Germany, where he helped develop an electronic train-crossing light controller. The original warning lights on crossing gates used a mercury tube as a switch.
“The concern was the danger to personnel if the tube broke,” he says. “However the simple and inexpensive solution was to put the tube in a metal container.”
Weston and his wife decided to leave Germany for Canada in 1975, after their young son began forgetting how to speak English. (He and his wife could only speak English to the son and he would only answer in German)
Working on the space shuttle and a particle accelerator
His first job in Canda was as an engineer for Canadian Aviation Electronics in Montreal. CAE helped design the remote manipulator system , robotic hand controllers and simulation systems used to train astronauts for the space shuttle.
The robotic arm, known as Canadarm, was used to deploy, maneuver, and capture payloads for the astronauts. Weston’s engineering team designed the display and control panel as well as the hand controllers located in the shuttle’s flight deck.
“I was attracted to the EMC aspects of the project and avidly studied everything I could on the topic,” he says.
He also developed a system that would protect an aircraft’s deployable black box mounted on the outside of the fuselage from lightning strikes.
“I used a computer program to analyze the EMI field at close proximity to the black box to predict the lightning current flowing into the aircraft structure,” he says. He then designed a scale model of the configuration which was able to generate 10,000V/ and tested the system.
While enjoying the warm winter weather during a 1975 visit to a supplier and testing on Long Island, N.Y., he decided he wanted to move his family there and asked whether any companies in the area were hiring. He was told that Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Upton, was, so he applied for a position working on the ring system for the Isabelle proton colliding-beam particle accelerator.
The project, later known as the colliding beam accelerator, was a collaboration between the lab and the U.S. Department of Energy. The 200+200 giga-electron volt proton-proton collider was designed to use advanced superconducting magnets cooled by a massive helium refrigeration system to produce high-energy collisions. The GeV refers to the collision energy in a particle accelerator.
The lab hired him in 1978, and the family moved to Long Island. After a few weeks of meeting with different departments, his boss asked him what kind of work he wanted to do. Weston told him about his idea for designing a device to detect a helium leak, should there ever be one. His machine would cover the entire 3,834-meter circumference area of the ring.
“The danger with increased helium-enriched air is that the oxygen level reduces until the person breathing becomes adversely affected,” he wrote in his memoir. “I found that the speed of the sound of helium increased enough to be detected, but not sufficient enough to cause a person trouble if they were in the tunnel.
“Brookhaven was considering machines that only covered a small area of the ring, but these would be unrealistic because too many machines would be needed, and the cost would have been astronomical.”
Weston’s system included an ultrasonic transmitter, a receiver, a power amplifier, and a preamplifier. It would sound an alarm if the helium content went above a certain level. People in the tunnel would be directed to go to the nearest oxygen-breathing equipment, put on a mask, and immediately evacuate. It was successfully tested. Weston wrote a report detailing the ultrasonic helium leak detector, but shortly after, he and his wife had to return to Canada in 1978 because the renewal of their work permits was delayed. It arrived two weeks before they left the United States.
When he returned to Brookhaven for a visit, his former boss told him the report was well-received. And he shared some news that was not a complete surprise for Weston.
“My boss told me he took my report, changed the name on the report to his, did not mention me, and published the report as his,” Weston wrote in his memoir.
But the system was never built. The Isabelle project was canceled in July 1983 due to technical problems with fabricating the superconducting magnets.
Weston got a job working for CAL Corp., an aerospace telecommunications company in Montreal. For the next 14 years, he fixed EMI problems for the company’s products, including its charge-coupled device-based space-qualified cameras, which were designed to be carried aboard a satellite.
In 1992 he realized that nearly all his work involved consulting for the company’s customers, so he decided to start his own agency. CAL generously let him take the clients he worked with and a shielded room, he says.
Weston then conducted EMI analysis and testing and designed EMC systems for companies around the world.
One finding Weston has made is that of the odd Electromagnetic wave. Here the field behind a metal plate that should attenuate the field in fact amplifies it. This is against conventional theory and counter intuitive. So far no one has disproved the analysis and measurement that he made that shows this wave does exist.
He retired in 2022.
His 1,192 page book Electromagnetic Compatibility: Methods, Analysis, Circuits, and Measurement references many IEEE papers on data and analysis methods including his own, and is just in its fourth edition.
After working for a number of companies, he launched his own business more than 40 years ago: EMC Consulting, Merrickville, Ontario., Canada. The company has helped clients meet EMI and EMC regulatory requirements.
In all those years Weston has always found a solution to an EMI problem to the satisfaction of the customer. This is except for the very few customers who have unrealistically wanted a cure with no equipment or software modifications!
His memoir covers his humble start on a building site to his finding of the odd EM wave.
Unsolicited confirmation of the contents of this blog can be found in:
The IEEE Spectrum Magazine:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/from-tv-repairman-to-electromagnetic-compatibility-expert
The IEEE Life Member Magazine:
The Interference Technology Magazine:
https://interferencetechnology.com/ebook-from-a-hod-to-an-odd-em-wave/
Also:
My name is Kara McAndrew, and I'm an Assistant Editor at Macmillan. I recently had the opportunity to learn about From a Hod to an Odd EM Wave: A Memoir of Engineering Persistence and Human Discovery, and I wanted to personally reach out to express how impressed I was by the remarkable journey and breadth of experience reflected throughout your memoir.
What immediately captured my attention was the extraordinary trajectory of your career. Beginning as a construction laborer in post-war Britain and progressing to work on advanced electronics, aerospace systems, and internationally significant engineering projects is an inspiring testament to perseverance, curiosity, and lifelong learning. Your story beautifully illustrates how determination and adaptability can open unexpected paths throughout a professional life.
I was particularly fascinated by the way your memoir intertwines technological history with personal experience. Your firsthand accounts of developments in electronics, medical technology, communications systems, and aerospace engineering offer readers a rare opportunity to witness decades of innovation through the eyes of someone who actively contributed to that progress. By documenting these experiences, you preserve an important chapter in the history of engineering that might otherwise remain largely untold.
Equally compelling is your emphasis on the human side of engineering. Rather than focusing solely on technical achievements, you explore the relationships, ethical decisions, workplace dynamics, and cultural experiences that accompany scientific and technological advancement. Your reflections remind readers that engineering is ultimately a collaborative human endeavor, shaped as much by character and resilience as by technical expertise.
I was also deeply moved by your inclusion of personal encounters with individuals whose lives intersected with major moments in history, particularly your work alongside Rudolf Vrba. Experiences such as these add a profound historical dimension to the memoir while highlighting the unexpected ways that engineering careers can intersect with remarkable human stories.
What I found especially meaningful is your willingness to share both the triumphs and the challenges encountered over decades of work across multiple countries and industries. The memoir serves not only as a record of technological achievement but also as an encouraging example for younger engineers who may be navigating their own evolving careers in an increasingly interconnected world.
I would truly enjoy learning more about what inspired you to document these experiences, which period of your career proved the most rewarding to revisit during the writing process, and which lessons you hope future generations of engineers will carry forward after reading your memoir.
Thank you for sharing such a thoughtful and inspiring account of a life devoted to engineering, discovery, and human resilience. I look forward to hearing from you and wish you continued success with From a Hod to an Odd EM Wave: A Memoir of Engineering Persistence and Human Discovery and your future writing endeavors.
Warm regards,
Kara McAndrew
Assistant Editor
Macmillan