In 1949 Earl Bakken and Palmer Hermundslie established a partnership for the repair of delicate laboratory and medical equipment. They named their company 'Medtronics'. In the mid-1950's Medtronics began working with the cardiac surgeons at the University of Minnesota Hospital. Within 3 to 4 years they had developed the first external, wearable, battery-powered transistorized pacemaker for human use, after cardiac surgery. By the late 1950's Dr. William Chardack and Wilson Greatbatch in Buffalo, New York had tested, on experimental dogs, an implantable, transistorized, mercury-zinc battery-operated pacemaker for potential long term treatment of heart block. Palmer Hermundslie flew to NY. in October, 1960 and signed a contract that gave Medtronics exclusive rights to produce and market the implantable cardiac pacemaker for human use. (In 1950 Hopps had built a pacemaker but it was too large to have practical application and there was no further development of his device.Thus, all of those listed plus others, that had studied the electrical stimulation of the heart muscle, were involved in various ways in the development of a cardiac pacemaker. Medtronics, under Bakken and Hermundslie, got out of the starting gate first and fastest. Pacemakers now have built-in automatic cardiac defibrillators).
1918 - 1970 (51 år)
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