About the Author

John Otten spent most of his working career within the lighting industry, having been educated and trained as a mechanical engineer in the late 1950s at Mullard in Blackburn, which was a very large factory producing radio and television valves but also had a large wire factory producing filament coils for much of the UK lamp industry. His father, also an electric lamp maker since the mid 1920s, persuaded him to join the family lamp manufacturing business, Kingston Lamp Co Ltd in Hull in 1964. This was taken over by Philips Electrical (through Ada Halifax) in 1965, in 1970 he was moved to the UK head office of Philips Lighting, after which he spent the rest of his career in various commercial, marketing and managerial positions. This culminated in him spending nearly eight years in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in an international role managing incandescent / halogen lamp product management and development worldwide.

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