Implantable Cardiac Pacemaker Inventor

Wilson Greatbatch, an electrical engineer, arrived at his idea for the implantable cardiac pacemaker by mistake.

In 1951, Greatbatch learned from two surgeons about heart block--an ailment caused when natural electrical impulses from the heart’s upper chambers fail to reach the heart’s lower chambers.

In 1956, while designing an electrical circuit to record fast-beating heart sounds, Greatbatch accidentally grabbed the wrong component and plugged it into the circuit he was making. This caused the circuit to pulse for 1.8 milliseconds, stop for 1 second, then repeat. Greatbatch recognized the familiar “lub-dub” rhythm of a heartbeat.

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