Otto schmitt’s contributions to basic and applied biomedical engineering and to the profession

Otto Schmitt was one of the early giants in biomedical engineering. Best known in engineering circles for the Schmitt Trigger, he also made many other significant scientific contributions. Besides his scientific work Otto was involved in early organizational activities, which included the first large professional BME meeting in Minneapolis in 1958. A description of his many contributions will be presented along with a short video of Schmitt giving a tour of his laboratory, including the original Schmitt Trigger and the model he used to develop his vector ECG system. Otto Schmitt is probably best known for his Schmitt trigger circuit which is widely used, at least in functional form, in many electronic devices today. His contributions are very diverse and include developing an important technique to detect submarines during World War II that is still used today, creating one of the best vector electrocardiographic systems, and his strong interest in paranormal investigations. He introduced the word ldquobiomimeticsrdquo to the world in a paper in 1969, which appeared in Webster's Dictionary in 1974. At the 1992 AAMI meeting, which awarded him the Laufman Prize, he presented a scholarly document with 12 action items for improving health care in this century. This document included technical items such as home health care, but also surprisingly conscience and ldquoprime features of quality of life, mind, spirit, and soul.rdquo Besides his scientific work, he was involved in many organizational efforts. Before NASA there were four committees dealing with space and Otto was on three of the four and chaired the committee on Bioastronautics. In 1947, a joint committee of AIEE, IRE, and ISA organized annual conferences on electrical issues in medicine over the next 10 years. These conferences were only attended by a small group with a few dozen presentations per year. In 1958, Schmitt organized a theme based meeting on ldquobiology and computersrdquo at the University of Minnesota which had 70 papers and 400 attendees. He was the founding president of the Biomedical Engineering Society and the founding vice president of the Biophysical Society. Schmitt contributed greatly to the development of EMBS and was twice given the Morlock Memorial award, which is now renamed as IEEE-EMBS Career Achievement Award. In 1979 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and in 1987, he received the Centennial Medal from the IEEE.