1960

First successful implantable pacemaker, developed by engineer Wilson Greatbatch and the surgeon William Chardack in Buffalo, New York. Implanted on June 6 and patient lived 30 months. It ultimately revolutionized the treatment of complete heart block (Ball & Featherstone, 2019). Licensed to Medtronics, whose “dominant position in the world pacemaker industry dates from the 1960s, when the company manufactured a succession of devices vetted by Chardack and Greatbatch and bearing the name Chardack-Greatbatch Implantable Cardiac Pacemaker” (Jeffrey, 103ff., quoted at 104). Surgeons and cardiologists were hopeful the early pacemakers would last 3-5 years, but they often failed within a few months, e.g., wire leads would break in patients’ bodies; pulse generators stopped working for no apparent reason; mercury batteries provided power for only 18 months or so (Jeffrey, 108). Standard pacemaker design of early 60s embodied physicians’, not engineers’, choices, viz, device had to be fully implanted; battery would not be rechargeable; and idea of AV synchrony was abandoned, with only ventricle paced (105-106).