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

Wilson Greatbatch had a brilliant idea and the technical know-how to turn his idea into a practical device, for which millions of people today are grateful. This is the story of the first pacemaker by the man who invented it. In the 1950s, while experimenting with the newly invented transistor, Greatbatch discovered "by accident" the proper design for a blocking oscillator, which he knew would work as the basic component of the pacemaker. After years of patient refinement of the early prototypes, in 1960, human implantation proved to be successful, and the new device immediately gave many seriously ill patients a new lease on life. Reminiscent of Edison's many dogged attempts to find the right solution in pursuit of an ingenious idea, this is a human-interest story at its best.