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Wilson Greatbatch - Inventor of the First Practical Implantable Cardiac Pacemaker
October 3, 2011
Many great
inventions are
interdisciplinary in nature. The inventor, skilled in one field, becomes interested in a problem outside his field, and he has a great idea that leads to an invention. Such was the case for
Wilson Greatbatch, an
electrical engineer from
Buffalo, New York, in 1956. His experience in designing a
transistorized heart monitor for the Chronic Disease Research Institute of the
State University of New York at Buffalo led to his development of the first practical
implantable pacemaker. Wilson Greatbatch (b. September 6, 1919) died on September 27, 2011, at age 92.[1-8]
In building that heart monitor, Greatbatch had to deal with the non-ideal properties of the transistors that were available at that time. The transistor had just been invented in 1947, and early commercial transistors were primitive affairs, laboriously constructed (does anyone remember the venerable
CK722?). They had very low
gain, so it wasn't always possible to design with enough
negative feedback to keep
amplifiers stable.
Quite often, your amplifier would become unstable and break into
oscillation. The same thing happened with Greatbatch's heart monitor, and he realized that his monitor circuit could also produce electrical impulses similar to those that the original circuit would be monitoring. For Greatbatch, the oscillation mode was fortuitous, since the wave train was a series of 1.8
millisecond pulses separated by an interval of about a second.[9] The circuit consumed very little average
current. Said Greatbatch, "I realized that this was exactly what was needed to drive a heart."[5]
Figure two from US Patent No. 3,057,356, "Medical Cardiac Pacemaker," by Wilson Greatbatch, October 9, 1962, via (Google Patents).[10] This is a simple blocking oscillator with a one-stage amplifier.
Greatbatch had remembered a lunchtime conversation about heart electrical activity he had with two visiting surgeons while he was an
undergraduate student working at an animal behavior laboratory at
Cornell University, and he reasoned that an external electrical stimulus could substitute for the one naturally generated in the heart.[9] His reminiscence of this is contained in his 2001 memoir, "The Making of the Pacemaker."[11]
Greatbatch decided to pursue his invention and perfect an implantable human cardiac pacemaker. He used $2,000 in savings (almost $20,000 in
today's money) and set to work in a barn laboratory at his home in
Clarence, New York, outside Buffalo. He spent two years developing a
prototype pacemaker.[2] An electronic device on its own is not a medical device, so he enlisted the aid of William C. Chardack, a
surgeon at the Buffalo
Veterans Administration Hospital, for
in vivo testing, first on
dogs, and then on humans.[1,5]
After the first dog experiment, in which Greatbatch's two-transistor,
half-pound pacemaker successfully controlled a living heart, he wrote in his diary.
"I seriously doubt if anything I ever do will ever give me the elation I felt that day when my own two cubic inch piece of electronic design controlled a living heart."[2]
Greatbatch's human cardiac pacemaker was implanted in 1960 in eight adult human subjects and two children, all of whom were given just a 50% chance of survival of one year without such intervention.[2,9] The device, which worked admirably, was licensed to
Medtronic of
Minneapolis. Medtronic had developed its own external pacemaker, and it quickly became the world leader in implanted cardiac pacemaker technology. More than half a million pacemakers are implanted annually.[1,3] Medtronic is presently valued at $36 billion.[8]
Just a little earlier, in 1958, Rune Elmqvist and Åke Senning of
Sweden produced an implantable pacemaker.[3] This device was surgically implanted in a human at the
Karolinska Institute in
Solna, Sweden, but it failed after three hours. Improvements in the device brought the time to failure up to two days, and then several months.[5] That's why Greatbatch is credited with the first
practical implantable cardiac pacemaker, but not the first.
Although the pacemaker worked as intended, its
Achilles heel was its power supply. The
zinc-mercuric oxide batteries, the best available technology at the time, would need to be replaced after just two years, which required another surgical procedure. Greatbatch founded Wilson Greatbatch Ltd.(subsequently, Greatbatch Inc.) to address the battery problem. He acquired the rights to a primitive, and possibly explosive,
lithium-iodine cell, and by 1972 he developed an implantable version that could power a pacemaker for ten years.[1,6] His batteries at one time were used in ninety percent of all pacemakers, and they even flew in equipment on the
Space Shuttle.[2]
What conditions molded Greatbatch into an
innovator who makes such a huge contribution to human welfare? His parents weren't professionals, although his
construction contractor father likely showed him a few tricks with
materials and
tools. Like many famous engineers of his age, Greatbatch was an
amateur radio operator (W2QBO). At the young age of sixteen, Greatbatch passed the test for his amateur radio license, which at that time required skill in
Morse code, and he joined the
Sea Scouts, a
Boy Scout variant, since they had a radio station.[12]
During
World War II, Greatbatch maintained shipboard communications and
guidance systems for the
Navy, eventually being assigned to airborne combat missions.[1] After the war, Greatbatch married his childhood sweetheart, Eleanor Wright, and worked as a
telephone repairman for a year before entering Cornell on the
G.I. Bill.[1,6] At Cornell, aside from his work at the animal farm instrumenting animals to monitor their vital functions, he built
radio receivers for the
Arecibo radio telescope.[9]
Greatbatch received his
BS in
electrical engineering from Cornell in 1950, and eventually was awarded a
master's degree in electrical engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1957.[2,6] He then became the manager of the electronics division at
Taber Instrument Corporation, Buffalo, where he tried to get support for his pacemaker ideas. Rebuffed at Taber, he quit to pursue the pacemaker on his own.[1]
Greatbatch was awarded a huge number of patents; so many, in fact, that the sources for this article give conflicting numbers.[1,2] In 1986, he was inducted into the
National Inventors Hall of Fame.[2]. In 1990, he received the
National Medal of Technology and Innovation from
US President, George H.W. Bush.[2] Greatbatch was a member of the
National Academy of Engineering.[6] He lived simply, donating his money to scientific research, charities and educational institutions.[3]
His philosophy of invention was simple,
"Nine things out of ten don't work - the tenth will pay for the other nine." [4]
References:
- Barnaby Feder, "Obituary: Wilson Greatbatch / Inventor who designed first practical implantable pacemaker," The New York Times, October 1, 2011.
- T. Rees Shapiro, "Wilson Greatbatch, co-inventor of implantable pacemaker, dies at 92," Washington Post, September 28, 2011.
- Valerie J. Nelson, "Wilson Greatbatch dies at 92; inventor of first practical implantable pacemaker," Los Angeles Times, September 30, 2011.
- Caroline Richmond, "Wilson Greatbatch obituary - American inventor of the first practicable heart pacemaker," Guardian (UK), September 29, 2011.
- Wilson Greatbatch, Telegraph (UK), September 28, 2011.
- Caroline Flax, "Wilson Greatbatch ’50, Pacemaker Inventor, Dies," Cornell Sun, September 30, 2011.
- UB mourns death of Wilson Greatbatch, University of Buffalo Web Site, September 29, 2011.
- Andy Kessler, "How Wilson Greatbatch 'Gave Back'," Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2011.
- John Adam, "Wilson Greatbatch - Engineer, Inventor of the Medical Cardiac Pacemaker, Engology.
- Wilson Greatbatch, "Medical Cardiac Pacemaker," US Patent No. 3,057,356, October 9, 1962.
- Wilson Greatbatch, "The Making of the Pacemaker: Celebrating a Life-Saving Invention," Prometheus Books, January, 2001, 260 pages (via Amazon).
- Southgate Amateur Radio News, "Radio Amateur Wilson Greatbatch W2QBO, who developed the implantable cardiac pacemaker, passed away on September 27, 2011, aged 92," September 29, 2011.
Permanent Link to this article
Linked Keywords: Invention; interdisciplinary; Wilson Greatbatch; electrical engineer; Buffalo, New York; transistor; transistorized; heart; State University of New York at Buffalo; implantable pacemaker; CK722; gain; negative feedback; amplifier; oscillation; millisecond; current; Google Patents; blocking oscillator; undergraduate student; Cornell University; time value of money; Clarence, New York; prototype; surgeon; Veterans Administration Hospital; in vivo; dog; half-pound; Medtronic; Minneapolis; Sweden; Karolinska Institute; Solna, Sweden; Achilles heel; zinc-mercuric oxide battery; lithium-iodine cell; Space Shuttle; innovator; construction contractor; materials; tools; amateur radio operator; Morse code; Sea Scouts; Boy Scouts; World War II; guidance system; US Navy; telephone; G.I. Bill; radio receiver; Arecibo radio telescope; Bachelor of Science; BS; electrical engineering; master's degree; Taber Instrument Corporation; National Inventors Hall of Fame; National Medal of Technology and Innovation; US President, George H.W. Bush; National Academy of Engineering; US Patent No. 3,057,356.