In 1960, a VA research team led by surgeon William Chardack inserted what he described as a “battery-operated gadget about twice as big as a spool of Scotch tape and much the same shape” under the skin of a patient suffering from a complete heart block. The compact “gadget”- better known as the cardiac pacemaker – sent electrical signals to stimulate the heart and help it maintain a regular rhythm. A bundle of ten mercury zinc cells generated the pulses. While other researchers had created external pacemakers, Dr. Chardack’s device was revolutionary because it was implantable and powered by its own battery pack. The internal cardiac pacemaker developed by his team transformed the field of cardiac medicine.
Work on the pacemaker began in 1958 at the VA hospital in Buffalo, New York. Dr. Chardack’s team included another surgeon, Andrew Gage, and electrical engineer Wilson Greatbatch. Together, they focused on the many possibilities of electricity in medicine. The group was known as the bow tie team on account of their penchant for wearing bow ties to work each day. It was the engineer Greatbatch who actually designed the pacemaker and he built the first 50 by hand in his backyard workshop. They tested a prototype of the device on a dog so they could observe the benefits of cardiac electrotherapy. Two years later, they were ready to implant the cardiac pacemaker in a human. The operation was a success and the man lived for another two years before dying of unrelated causes. Subsequent patients who received the pacemaker lived for as long as 20 years after the surgery.
The bow tie team continued to refine their invention in the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1972, with Dr. Chardack assisting, Dr. Gage implanted the first nuclear-powered cardiac pacemakers in patients at the Buffalo VA hospital. The same year, Greatbatch pioneered the use of long-lasting lithium-iodine cells as a power source for pacemakers.
Although surgical techniques and pacemaker technologies have evolved over the years, the basic design remains similar to the device introduced to the medical world by Dr. Chardack and his collaborators in 1960. The cardiac pacemaker developed by VA researchers has improved the length and quality of life for thousands of Veterans and millions of people worldwide.
By Parker Beverly
Virtual Student Federal Service Intern, Veterans Health Administration
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History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 86: The Roll of Honor
“The following pages are devoted to the memory of those heroes who have given up their lives upon the altar of their country, in defense of the American Union.”
So opened the preface to the first volume of the Roll of Honor, a compendium of over 300,000 Federal soldiers who died during the Civil War and were interred in national and other cemeteries. The genesis of this 27-volume collection published between 1865 and 1871 can be traced to Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs and the department he oversaw for a remarkable 21 years from 1861 to 1882.
History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 85: Congressman Claypool’s “$1 Per Day Pension” Ribbon
Founded in 1866 as fraternal organization for Union Veterans, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) embraced a new mission in the 1880s: political activism. The GAR formed a pension committee in 1881 for the express purpose of lobbying Congress for more generous pension benefits.
An artifact from the political wrangling over pensions is now part of the permanent collection of the National VA History Center in Dayton, Ohio. The item is a small pension ribbon displaying the message: “I endorse the $1 per day pension as recommended by the Departments of Ohio and Indiana G.A.R.” The button attached to the ribbon features two American flags and the phrase “saved by the boys of ’61-65.” The back of the ribbon bears the signature of Horatio C. Claypool, a Democratic judge who ran for the seat in Ohio’s eleventh Congressional district in the 1910 mid-term elections.
History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 84: Gettysburg Address Tablet
President Abraham Lincoln is one of the most revered figures in American history. Rankings of U.S. presidents routinely place him at or near the top of the list. Lincoln is also held in high esteem at VA. His stirring call during his second inaugural address in 1865 to “care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan” embodies the nation’s promise to all who wear the uniform, a promise VA and its predecessor administrations have kept ever since the Civil War.
Ever since Lincoln first uttered those memorable words in November 1863, the Gettysburg Address has been linked to our national cemeteries. In 1908, Congress approved a plan to produce a standard Gettysburg Address tablet to be installed in all national cemeteries in time for the centennial of President Lincoln’s birth on February 12, 1909.
