The Making of the Pacemaker: Celebrating a Life-Saving Invention [Hardcover]

Wilson Greatbatch (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1573928062 | ISBN-13: 978-1573928069 | Publication Date: January 2001 | Edition: 1

Intrigued by electronics from the time he was a boy, Greatbatch earned a degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University. It was during his time at Cornell that he first became interested in the medical applications of electronic devices. He learned about the problem of heart blocking at Cornell and knew it was fixable in principle, but at the time the vacuum-tube technology was impractical for medical use. By the 1950s he was teaching at the University of Buffalo School of Electrical Engineering and the first silicon transistors had just been invented.While using one of the new $90 transistors on another project Greatbatch discovered by accident, as he describes it, the proper design for a blocking oscillator that he immediately knew would work as a pacemaker. He soon interested Dr. William Chardack, chief of surgery at the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Buffalo, in the project, and by 1958 they were conducting animal experiments. Reminiscent of Edison's many dogged attempts to find the right solution in pursuit of an ingenious idea, "The Making of the Pacemaker" is a human-interest story at its best and also an important firsthand account for the medical archives of an invention that today saves millions of lives.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...concise, readable, and extremely well-researched." -- Choice, June 2001

From the Author

In 1958, we foresaw an optimistic annual usage of about 10,000 pacemakers per year. In a remarkably short time, the implantable pacemaker became the treatment of choice for complete heart block with Stokes-Adam syndrome. Today, more than forty years later, pacemakers have assumed forms and functions that we never dreamed of, and the world pacemaker market is well over 600,000 units per year.

It seems fitting, therefore, to sit down and document everything that I can remember about the people and events, about the components and designs, and about all that happened to us in those forty-two years.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 260 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books; 1 edition (January 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573928062
• ISBN-13: 978-1573928069
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,337,061 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #91 in Books > Medical Books > Medicine > Prosthesis

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