Wilson Greatbatch (September 6, 1919 – September 27, 2011) was an
American engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...
and pioneering inventor. He held more than 325 patents and was a
member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and a recipient of the
Lemelson–MIT Prize
The Lemelson-MIT Program awards several prizes yearly to inventors in the United States. The largest is the Lemelson–MIT Prize which was endowed in 1994 by Jerome H. Lemelson, funded by the Lemelson Foundation, and is administered through the Sc ...
and the
National Medal of Technology and Innovation (1990).
Early years
Greatbatch was born in
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...
and attended public grade school at
West Seneca
West Seneca is a town in Erie County, New York, United States. The population was 44,711 at the 2010 census. West Seneca is a centrally located interior town of the county, and a suburb of Buffalo. West Seneca, Orchard Park and Hamburg form the ...
High School.
He entered military service and served during World War II, becoming an aviation chief radioman before receiving an
honorable discharge in 1945.
He attended
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
as part of the GI Bill, graduating with a B.E.E. in
electrical engineering in 1950; he received a master's degree from the
University of Buffalo
The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 18 ...
in 1957. Wilson loved fiddling with objects and this would lead to great things.
The Chardack-Greatbatch pacemaker
The ''Chardack-Greatbatch'' pacemaker used Mallory mercuric oxide-zinc cells (
mercury battery) for its energy source, driving a two transistor, transformer coupled
blocking oscillator circuit, all encapsulated in
epoxy resin, then coupled to electrodes placed into the
myocardium of the patient's heart. This
patented
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...
innovation led to the
Medtronic company of
Minneapolis
Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...
commencing manufacture and further development of
artificial cardiac pacemaker
An artificial cardiac pacemaker (or artificial pacemaker, so as not to be confused with the natural cardiac pacemaker) or pacemaker is a medical device that generates electrical impulses delivered by electrodes to the chambers of the heart ei ...
s.
The Greatbatch lithium-iodide battery cell
In 1968,
Catalyst Research Corporation
Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...
of
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
developed and patented a
lithium battery cell . The cell used two elements at near ends of the
electrochemical
Electrochemistry is the branch of physical chemistry concerned with the relationship between electrical potential difference, as a measurable and quantitative phenomenon, and identifiable chemical change, with the potential difference as an outc ...
scale, causing a high
voltage
Voltage, also known as electric pressure, electric tension, or (electric) potential difference, is the difference in electric potential between two points. In a static electric field, it corresponds to the work needed per unit of charge to ...
of 2.8V and an energy density near the physical maximum. Unfortunately, it had an internal
impedance which limited its current load to under 0.1 mA and was thus considered useless.
Greatbatch sought to introduce this invention into the pacemaker industry, which could readily utilize a high impedance battery. The early work was conducted in a rented area of the former
Wurlitzer
The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to as simply Wurlitzer, is an American company started in Cincinnati in 1853 by German immigrant (Franz) Rudolph Wurlitzer. The company initially imported stringed, woodwind and brass instruments ...
Organ Factory in
North Tonawanda, New York
North Tonawanda is a city in Niagara County, New York, United States. The population was 31,568 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Buffalo–Niagara Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city is named after Tonawanda Creek, its south b ...
.
Ralph Mead
Ralph (pronounced ; or ,) is a male given name of English, Scottish and Irish origin, derived from the Old English ''Rædwulf'' and Radulf, cognate with the Old Norse ''Raðulfr'' (''rað'' "counsel" and ''ulfr'' "wolf").
The most common forms ...
is understood to have headed the early electrochemical development.
Greatbatch introduced the developed ''WG1'' cell to
pacemaker developers in 1971, and was met with limited enthusiasm. On July 9, 1974, Manuel A. Villafaña and
Anthony Adducci founders of
Cardiac Pacemakers Inc.(
Guidant
Guidant Corporation, part of Boston Scientific and Abbott Labs, designs and manufactures artificial cardiac pacemakers, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators, stents, and other cardiovascular medical products. Their company headquarters is lo ...
) in St. Paul, Minnesota, manufactured the world's first pacemaker with a lithium anode and a lithium-iodide electrolyte solid-state battery. The lithium-iodide cell manufactured by Greatbatch is now the standard cell for pacemakers, having the
energy density, low self-discharge, small size and reliability needed.
In the cell as developed for cardiac pacemaker application, the
anode
An anode is an electrode of a polarized electrical device through which conventional current enters the device. This contrasts with a cathode, an electrode of the device through which conventional current leaves the device. A common mnemonic ...
is
lithium
Lithium (from el, λίθος, lithos, lit=stone) is a chemical element with the symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the least dense solid ...
and the
cathode
A cathode is the electrode from which a conventional current leaves a polarized electrical device. This definition can be recalled by using the mnemonic ''CCD'' for ''Cathode Current Departs''. A conventional current describes the direction in wh ...
a proprietary composition of
iodine and poly-2-vinylpyridine, neither of which is electrically conductive. However, after processing by mixing and heating to ~ 150 °C for 72 hours the components react with each other to form an electrically conductive viscous liquid which, while still molten, is poured into the cell where it cools to form a solid. When the liquid contacts the lithium anode it creates a monomolecular layer of semiconducting crystalline lithium iodide. As the cell is discharged by the current load of the pacemaker, the reaction between the lithium anode and iodine cathode forms a growing barrier of lithium iodide, This is
resistive
The electrical resistance of an object is a measure of its opposition to the flow of electric current. Its reciprocal quantity is , measuring the ease with which an electric current passes. Electrical resistance shares some conceptual parallels ...
, and causes the terminal voltage of the cell to decrease approximately as an inverse function of the volume of the barrier. Pacemaker designers use this characteristic to permit detection of incipient 'end of life' of the pacemaker's lithium cell.
Philanthropy
Greatbatch donated funds to
Houghton College
Houghton University is a private Christian liberal arts college in Houghton, New York. Houghton was founded in 1883 by Willard J. Houghton and is affiliated with the Wesleyan Church. in New York to create a graduate program in music. The Houghton College Center for the Arts (CFA) was designed with his donations to include a concert hall, art gallery, multi-floor gathering space, and various choir and instrumental practice rooms. It was subsequently named the Greatbatch School of Music after him. Houghton College assisted Greatbatch in his research, when he was unable to generate support, providing him with lab space and research assistance.
In 2009, Wilson and Eleanor Greatbatch donated approximately $10 million to create a modern glass reception and interpretive pavilion, called the ''Eleanor and Wilson Greatbatch Pavilion'', separate from the
Darwin D. Martin House
The Darwin D. Martin House Complex is a historic house museum in Buffalo, New York. The property's buildings were designed by renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright and built between 1903 and 1905. The house is considered to be one of the most imp ...
Complex. It was designed by
Toshiko Mori
Toshiko Mori (born 1951) is a Japanese architect and the founder and principal of New York-based Toshiko Mori Architect, PLLC and Vision Arc. She is also the Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture at the Harvard University Gra ...
, chair of the department of architecture at
Harvard's Graduate School of Design.
Death
Wilson Greatbatch died at the age of 92 on September 27, 2011.
Greatbatch served as an elder at Clarence
Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...
Church, where he also sang in the church choir and taught Sunday school.
References
Specific references
General references
Biography of Greatbatch at MIT website*
*
Greatbatch.com Company Website* Beck H, Boden WE, Patibandla S, Kireyev D, Gutpa V, Campagna F, Cain ME, Marine JE.''50th Anniversary of the first successful permanent pacemaker implantation in the United States: historical review and future directions.'' Am J Cardiol. 2010 Sep 15;106(6):810-8.
External links
*
A video interview with Wilson Greatbatchfrom vega.org.uk
Implantable pacemaker inventor Wilson Greatbatch diesfrom BBC 28 September 2011
/big>
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Greatbatch, Wilson
1919 births
2011 deaths
People from Buffalo, New York
20th-century American inventors
American Presbyterians
Cornell University College of Engineering alumni
Lemelson–MIT Prize
National Medal of Technology recipients
Medtronic
University at Buffalo alumni