The Pacemaker
While working with an oscilloscope, a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying signal voltages, in 1956, American engineer Wilson Greatbatch would accidentally discover a life saving machine all because he installed the wrong electrical component.
While working as a medical researcher, Greatbatch was actually meaning to build an oscillator to record heart sounds when he accidentally pulled the wrong resistor out of a box. Once he switched on his device, he noticed it began to give off a rhythmic electrical pulse.
Pacemakers were already a per-existing device but were bulky, about the size of television, and the shock it gave off was a painful experience for the patients it was used on. Greatbatch soon realized that by running electrodes directly from his new machine into the muscle tissue of the heart he could regulate the hearts electrical impulses indefinitely.
He would spend the next two years refining his device, and after conducting experiments on dogs, Greatbatch would be awarded a patent for world’s first implantable pacemaker. The first recipient of this revolutionary device, Arne Larsson, would live for another 43 years and have a total of 26 pacemakers installed in his lifetime.
