About Us

High Tide's employees bring over 120 years of Silicon Valley high-tech experience in the domain of electromagnetic machine design. We are electromagnetic and mechanical specialists from the computer disk drive industry, teaming up to create the first commercially available ultra-high power human-generated portable charging system. Original versions designed for the US Army and Special Forces, with patented technology, are now available to consumers.

Albert Hartman

Founder of High Tide Associates.

Albert has spent his career in engineering on generators and motors. 9 of those years were for human-powered dynamos preceeded by 20 doing hard disk drives. He started High Tide after a lab accident where he shorted a running disk drive motor and noticed a ton of electricity produced. BSME Cornell University '79, PE, holds 10 US patents in electromagnetics, authored numerous papers, member of ASME & IEEE, and does technical volunteering at several NGOs.

Wendy Lorimer, Ph.D.

Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley, 1995. 
MSME, BSME University of Michigan, 1984, 1983.

Wendy has seventeen years industry experience in mechanical engineering - twelve in the hard disk drive industry and five with military contractors. She has been with High Tide for seven years developing human-powered generators for military and consumer products. She specializes in electromagnetics - analysis, design, and test of devices including generators, actuators, latches, brushless dc and voice coil motors. She is the author of 13 technical papers and holds 3 patents. Wendy is a member of ASME & IEEE, volunteers for MentorNet & Girl Scouts, and is a Yoga and Pilates instructor.

Babu S. Rahman, Ph.D.

Director.

Babu Rahman (Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley) brings over 20 years of mechanical and executive experience to the company.  As part of the disk drive industry, he spent 17 years doing motor design, driver electrical modeling, finite element analysis, tester design and advanced data acquisition/instrument control.  Most recently, Babu spent the past 4 years at Apple (iPod/iPhone division) as a senior manager for Core Technology components such as batteries, displays, click wheels, and flash.  On the executive level, Mr. Rahman was responsible for battery vendor qualification/management for Apple.  Babu is also President of Agami, a non-profit organization promoting education in Bangladesh, and has thus far raised just under $250,000 to support poor, underprivileged children.