Otto J. M. Smith

Otto J. M. Smith was an educator, inventor and author in the fields of engineering and electronics. He spent most of his career as a professor at University of California Berkeley. Dr. Smith is probably best known for the invention of the Smith predictor, a method of handling deadtime in feedback control systems:

"A somewhat more complicated solution to the deadtime problem was proposed in 1957 by Otto Smith (see 'The Smith Predictor: A Process Engineer's Crystal Ball,' Control Engineering, May 1996). Mr. Smith demonstrated how a mathematical model of the process could be used to endow the controller with prescience to generate just the right control moves without waiting to see how each move turned out. "

It was for this achievement that he was listed in InTech's "Leaders of the Pack" as one of the 50 most influential industry innovators since 1774. Other notable early achievements of Dr. Smith were the purchase in 1951 of the rights to his sine-function generator, U.S. Patent 2,748,278 by Hewlett Packard, and in 1958, the publication of a technical textbook on feed back control systems by McGraw-Hill.

More recently Dr. Smith has developed methods of running three-phase induction motors on single phase power. He has also worked on methods of providing power to single phase supply lines from three phase generators. His first patent in this field, "Three-Phase Induction Motor with Single-Phase Power Supply", U.S. Patent 4,792,740, was issued 20 December 1988. He coined the words "enabler" and "phaseable" and "semi-hex" to distinguish these techniques from traditional static phase conversion, rotary phase conversion and electronic means of synthesizing three phase voltages and current. These techniques allow the use of large three phase motors up to over 100 hp where only single phase power is available. Since 1976 all of his patents have been for devices to generate or conserve energy. Among his patents are designs of patents for solar generators, wind generators and high efficiency motors. That portion of the US patent database that is searchable by name (since 1975) lists 15 inventions by Dr. Smith in these fields. Dr. Smith, by his own account, has published over 150 papers. The list of patents in this article should be nearly complete.