About Chris Towle

L C Towle, born 1928, graduated with honours in Mechanical Engineering from Kings College, Durham and gained his early industrial experience with George Kent Ltd which he joined as a graduate apprentice in 1950. Progressing through the R & D department, he became Chief Electronics Engineer in 1966. Since 1954 he has been involved in the design of intrinsically safe instrumentation and in British Standards Committees on IS apparatus, systems and codes of practice. He is secretary of both the IEC and CENELEC committees on intrinsic safety, and has published many papers on intrinsic safety and surge protection. A founder member of Measurement Technology, he was the MTL Group Technology Director for many years, and is internationally recognised for his expertise in the field of ‘explosion protection’. For a short time he was Managing Director of Telematic Ltd when that company was acquired by the group.
In more recent years, he ‘withdrew’ from direct involvement in the management of MTL and now acts as consultant and minor irritant to his colleagues.He claims to have considerable knowledge on intrinsic safety and to be one of the three people in the world who understand ‘earthing’ [The other two are wrong]. He has recently has become interested in IEC 61508 [SIL and all that] and is on a steep sceptical learning curve.