Earl was born in Columbia Heights, Minnesota back in 1924. He described himself as a nerd. He attended the University of Minnesota earning a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1948. Just after WWII hospitals were just starting to employ electronic equipment however, they did not have the staff to maintain and repair them.
Seizing on the opportunity he started his own business to assist the medical institutions in doing just that. He, with the help of his brother-in-law, started the company in his garage and as they say the rest is history. He was round when Dr. C. Walton Lillehei was performing a life-saving surgery on children with blue baby syndrome.
Now you may be asking yourself what surgery did Doctor Lillehei perform and what business did Earl start? Well now you came to the right place so let’s get started. You see Doctor Lillehei was a heart surgeon and his specialty was attaching a pacemaker. Back then the device required the device to pushed around on a cart and to be plugged in to an electrical outlet. So, what did Earl do to relieve that issue. I guess before I tell you I’ll tell you I’m writing about Earl Bakken. What he did was he founded Medtronic, developing the first external, battery-operated, transistorized, wearable artificial pacemaker in 1957. As far as I know he is alive and well at 93 living in Hawaii. He also founded the Bakken Museum located on the shores of Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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