A blog about what is new (and old) in the world of active implantable medical devices

History: Wilson Greatbatch’s 1950s prototyping style

Posted on by Posted in Bradycardia, Cardiac Pacing, History, Museum
Wilson Greatbatch's prototype circuit of 1961 pacemaker on manila envelope

(c) 2026 David Prutchi PhD

In his early days, Wilson Greatbatch used to prototype his pacemaker circuits onto a manila folder printed with the circuit’s schematic. 

In 2000 he gave this reproduction of his 1961 pacemaker to the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology (NASPE, now the Heart Rhythm Society -HRS).

David Prutchi PhD holding prototype of Greatbatch's 1961 pacemaker circuit

This item is in the collection of artifacts of the HRS.

Related to the circuit in this picture, Daniel Villamil and I recently published a paper in which we analyzed the earliest battery-powered implantable pacemakers developed independently by Rune Elmqvist (1958) and Wilson Greatbatch (1960), and we reconstructed faithful working replicas to explore the design tradeoffs and constraints that shaped these devices.  The online version is here: http://doi.org/10.1111/pace.70127 (note: the article is not open access).