10545 Main Street, Clarence, N.Y. 14031 (U.S.A.)
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Clarence, New York. The Order of Alexanderthe Great for Art and Science is proud to announce: Dr. WilsonGreatbatch, the inventor of the implantable heartpacemaker, washonored by the National Academy of Engineering by being awarded theRuss Prize, that is described as the Nobel Prize ofengineering.
The Order and its worldwide Members and supporterscongratulate Wilson Greatbatch, the Vice-President of the Order,cordially.
Among the media-reports of TV and Press we publishthe following article by The Buffalo News, which carried the story onthe front page, with a photo of the inventor.
For further inquiries and congratulations you maycontact: The Order of Alexander the Great, 10545 Main Street,Clarence, New York 14031.
Consul B. John Zavrel
Chancellor of the Order
February 1, 2001
News Washington Bureau Chief
Washington. - The legendary career of oneof Western New York's most prolific inventors will be crowned heretoday when the National Academy of Engineering presents him with itsnewest, and one of its most prestigeous, awards.
Wilson Greatbatch of Clarence, inventor of theimplantable heart pacemaker, will receive half of a $ 500,000 prizethat is described as the Nobel Prize of engineering.
Greatbatch is a sixth-generation Western NewYorker, born in Children's Hospital and raised on the WestSide.
Gifted with a self-effacing sense of humor,Greatbatch has lived the almost-mythical solitary inventor'slife.
As a toddler, he experimented with a harmonica. Inmiddle age, he invented a cardiac device that has saved millions oflives. Now, at 81, Greatbatch is seeking a cure for AIDS.
His wide-ranging and penetrating curiosity alsohas moved him to pursue breakthroughs in applying genetic science tomedicine and agriculture, and in nuclear power generation.
His early success was born in Western New York.His world-famous heart pacemaker, implanted in more than 600,000people last year, was developed in a barn in Clarence using $ 2,000in family savings.
"Perhaps my greatest satisfaction was when it wasfirst hooked up to a dog's eart," Greatbatch said, in an operation in1958 at Buffalo Veterans Hospital.
"It worked, and I was just elated," he said. "A2-cubic inch piece of electronics, and it was running aheart."
Though most of his fame stems from the pacemaker,Greatbatch has spent most of the past two decades in research for acure for AIDS. He holds two world patents in AIDS research; twoothers are pending.
He originally collaborated on research into theviral killer with an agricultural scientist at Cornell Universitystation in Geneva, but Greatbatch now divides his time betweenresearch teams at the University of Rochester School of Engineeringand the National Institutes of Health in suburbanMaryland.
His original co-worker, Greatbatch said, "did somegenetic engineering with an onion and sold it off, and he made a lotof money on that one."
Greatbatch's inventions are earning him a share ofthe Russ Prize in Engineering, co-sponsored by the engineering branchof the National Academy of Sciences and Ohio University.
In 1996, he earned a lifetime achievement awardfrom the Massachussetts Institute of Technology; in 1986, he wasinducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
In 1985, the National Society of ProfessionalEngineers named Greatbatch's invention of the pacemaker one of the 10greatest engineering contributions to society of the past 50years.
It was at Millard Fillmore Hospital in APril 1960that the device was first implanted into a human being -- "a fellownamed Hennaselt," Greatbatch said Wednesday.
By his own account, Greatbatch is not a wealthyman, despite holding 220 patents, having founded four companies, andwith the pacemaker used by millions of people worldwide.
"I gave most of it away," he said. "I built fivebuildings at Houghton College. I have enough. I live in a (converted)one-room schoolhouse here. You don't need more than youneed."
Houghton gave him an honorary doctorate in1970.
Greatbatch played football at West Seneca HighSchool.
"I was the heaviest guy on the team, playedtackle," he said. "I weighed 150 pounds."
During World War II, Greatbatch flew combatmissions. With all that death around him, he began carrying a Biblein his pants leg during each mission.
After service, he attended Buffalo State TeachersCollege.
"I thought I wanted to teach industrial arts," hesaid.
"I talked my way into the engineering school atCornell. The only distinction I had there was that my wife and I hadthe most children of anyone in school. We had three then, later twomore."
He solved his post-World War II housing problem bybuying a run-down farm in Tompkins County for $ 1,300, and commutedback and forth to Cornell in a 1936 Buick.
Asked if he was thrilled about winning the award,Greatbatch said: "That's all in the past. They keep giving you awardsfor things you did 20 years ago."
But as recently as 1993, he received his firstAIDS patent for a technique to inhibit a similar virus fromreplicating in cats.
PRIZE INCLUDES $ 250,000
And not long ago, he built a canoe that traveled150 miles on solar power on Seneca Lake.
"We had three inches of free-board (clearance) onthat thing," he said. "One whitecap and it was over."
Noting that Thomas Edison had more than 1,000patents to his name, Greatbatch said he has only 220. "I have a goalof having one patent a month," he said. "I figure I can catch up withhim in 70 years."
He's sharing the Russ Prize with Earl Bakken,inventor of the wearable cacemaker. Each will get $250,000.
About the same time Greatbatch was developing theimplantable pacemaker, Bakken was working on the first wearable,battery-powered external pacemaker.
Greatbatch was told of the award in December.Ironically, he had been asked to write a letter recommending Bakkenfor the award, and did so -- not knowing he was up for the prizehimself.
The Russ Prize, which will be awarded every year,is named for engineer and inventor Fritz J. Russ and his wife,Dolores, in recognition of outstanding achievement in biotechnologyengineering.
The pacemaker restores the heartbeat to a normalrate, and is most often used to relieve the symptoms of bradycardia,a condition in which the heart beats at less than 60 beats a minute,a rate that may not meet the body's demands.
The invention resulted from a lab mistakeGreatbatch made nearly half-century ago. He was making an oscillatorto record heart sounds and erroneously used a resistor with the wrongresistance. It gave a steady pulse. So Greatbatch thought it might beused to steady the human heart. Until then, machines used for thatpurpose were the size of a TV set.
AVAILABLE TO STUDENTS
Greatbatch said the key to miniturizing thepacemaker was the development of the transistor, invented at BellLaboratories in New Jersey in the mid-1950s.
Among the businesses he founded are GreatbatchGen-Aid, which provides genetic assistance to industry; GreatbatchEnterprises, which researches nuclear power generation throughfusion; and Wilson Greatbatch Inc. to make, sell and license iodidebattery to pacemaker manufacturers.
In 1963, he founded Mennen-Greatbatch Electronicsto commercialize the instrument system he invented for the firstmonkey space shots.
With all of this, Greatbatch finds time to meetand talk with college students, according to the MITcitation.
It reads in part: "Invariably he repeats passagesfrom his favorite two-minute speech, first given in 1987 at ClarksonUniversity in Potsdam, New York. He urges listeners: Don't fearfailure. Don't crave success. The reward is not in the results, butrather in the doing."
February 1, 2001
Washington, USA