"Chardack-Greatbatch Pacemaker" Wilson Greatbatch Signed Hand Drawn Schematic

Description

Up for auction a VERY RARE!
"Chardack-Greatbatch Pacemaker" Wilson Greatbatch Signed Hand Drawn 7.5X10.5 Schematic on Board. This item rarely comes to auction and has sold in the past for 00. This drawing is also noted 1958 Pacemaker. A once in a lifetime chance to won a piece of scientific/medical history.
This item is authenticated By Todd Mueller Autographs and comes with their certificate of authenticity.
ES-3366D
Wilson Greatbatch
(September 6, 1919 – September 27, 2011) was an
American
engineer
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
and the
National Medal of Technology and Innovation
(1990). Greatbatch was born in
Buffalo, New York
and attended public grade school at
West Seneca
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
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
in 1957. Wilson loved fiddling with objects and this would lead to other great things.
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
innovation led to the
Medtronic
company of
Minneapolis
commencing manufacture and further development of
artificial cardiac pacemakers
. In 1968,
Catalyst Research Corporation
of
Baltimore, Maryland
developed and patented a
lithium battery
cell (USA patent 4049890). The cell used two elements at near ends of the
electrochemical
scale, causing a high
voltage
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
Organ Factory
in
North Tonawanda, New York
.
Ralph Mead
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
) 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
is
lithium
and the
cathode
a proprietary composition of
iodine
and poly-2-vinyl pyridine, 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
, 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. Greatbatch donated funds to
Houghton College
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 million to create a modern glass reception and interpretive pavilion, called the
Eleanor and Wilson Greatbatch Pavilion
, separate from the
Darwin D. Martin House
Complex. It was designed by
Toshiko Mori
, chair of the department of architecture at
Harvard
's Graduate School of Design. Wilson Greatbatch died at the age of 92 on September 27, 2011. Greatbatch served as an elder at Clarence
Presbyterian
Church, where he also sang in the church choir and taught Sunday school.