Thousands and thousands of individuals worldwide have cause to be grateful that Swedish engineer Rune Elmqvist determined to not observe drugs. Though certified as a physician, he selected to invent medical tools as a substitute. In 1949, whereas working at Elema-Schonander (later Siemens-Elema), in Stockholm, he utilized for a patent for the Mingograph, the primary inkjet printer. Its movable nozzle deposited an electrostatically managed jet of ink droplets on a spool of paper.
Rune Elmqvist certified to be a doctor, however he devoted his profession to growing medical tools, like this galvanometer.Håkan Elmqvist/Wikipedia
Elmqvist demonstrated the Mingograph on the First Worldwide Congress of Cardiology in Paris in 1950. It may document physiological alerts from a affected person’s electrocardiogram or electroencephalogram in actual time, aiding medical doctors in diagnosing coronary heart and mind circumstances. Eight years later, he labored with cardiac surgeon Åke Senning to develop the primary absolutely implantable pacemaker. So whether or not you’re operating paperwork by an inkjet printer or dwelling your finest life as a result of a pacemaker, give a nod of appreciation to the creative Dr. Elmqvist.
The world’s first inkjet printer
Rune Elmqvist was an inquisitive individual. Whereas nonetheless a scholar, he invented a specialised potentiometer to measure pH and a transportable multichannel electrocardiograph. In 1940, he turned head of growth on the Swedish medical electronics firm Elema-Schonander.
Earlier than the Mingograph, electrocardiograph machines relied on a writing stylus to hint the waveform on a shifting roll of paper. However friction between the stylus and the paper prevented small adjustments within the electrical sign from being precisely recorded. Elmqvist’s preliminary design was a modified oscillograph. Historically, an oscillograph used a mirror to replicate a beam of sunshine (transformed from {the electrical} sign) onto photographic movie or paper. Elmqvist swapped out the mirror for a small, moveable glass nozzle that repeatedly sprayed a skinny stream of liquid onto a spool of paper. {The electrical} sign electrostatically managed the jet.
By eliminating the friction of a stylus, the Mingograph (which the corporate marketed because the Mingograf) was capable of document extra detailed adjustments of the heartbeat. The machine had three paper-feed speeds: 10, 25, and 50 millimeters per second. The pace could possibly be preset or modified whereas in operation.
An analog enter jack on the Mingograph could possibly be used to take measurements from different devices. Researchers in disciplines far afield from drugs took benefit of this enter to document strain or sound. Phoneticians used it to look at the acoustic elements of speech, and zoologists used it to document birdsongs. All through the second half of the twentieth century, scientists cited the Mingograph of their analysis papers as an instrument for his or her experiments.
At the moment, the Mingograph isn’t that broadly recognized, however the underlying expertise, inkjet printing, is ubiquitous. Inkjets dominate the house printer market, and specialised printers print DNA microarrays in labs for genomics analysis, create electrical traces for printed circuit boards, and way more, as Phillip W. Barth and Leslie A. Discipline describe of their 2024 IEEE Spectrum article “Inkjets Are for Extra Than Simply Printing.”
The world’s first implantable pacemaker
Regardless of the affect of the Mingograph on the evolution of printing, it’s arguably not Elmqvist’s most essential innovation. The Mingograph helped medical doctors diagnose coronary heart circumstances, nevertheless it couldn’t save a affected person’s life by itself. Considered one of Elmqvist’s different innovations may and did: the primary absolutely implantable, rechargeable pacemaker.
Like many tales within the historical past of expertise, this one was pushed into fruition on the urging of a girl, on this case Else-Marie Larsson. Else-Marie’s 43-year-old husband, Arne, suffered from scarring of his coronary heart tissue as a result of a viral an infection. His coronary heart beat so slowly that he consistently misplaced consciousness, a situation generally known as Stokes-Adams syndrome. Else-Marie refused to just accept his dying sentence and looked for an alternate. After studying a newspaper article about an experimental implantable pacemaker being developed by Elmqvist and Senning on the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, she determined that her husband can be the proper candidate to try it out, despite the fact that it had been tried solely on animals up till that time.
Exterior pacemakers—that’s, gadgets exterior the physique that regulated the center beat by making use of electrical energy—already existed, however they had been heavy, cumbersome, and uncomfortable. One early mannequin plugged immediately right into a wall socket, so the person risked electrical shock.
By comparability, Elmqvist’s pacemaker was sufficiently small to be implanted within the physique and posed no shock threat. Absolutely encased in an epoxy resin, the disk-shaped system had a diameter of 55 mm and a thickness of 16 mm—the scale of the Kiwi Shoe Polish tin wherein Elmqvist molded the primary prototypes. It used silicon transistors to tempo a pulse with an amplitude of two volts and period of 1.5 milliseconds, at a charge of 70 to 80 beats per minute (the common grownup coronary heart charge).
The pacemaker ran on two rechargeable 60-milliampere-hour nickel-cadmium batteries organized in sequence. A silicon diode related the batteries to a coil antenna. A 150-kilohertz radio loop antenna exterior the physique charged the batteries inductively by the pores and skin. The cost lasted a few week, nevertheless it took 12 hours to recharge. Think about having to remain put that lengthy.
Else-Marie’s persuasion and persistence pushed Elmqvist and Senning to maneuver from animal checks to human trials, with Arne as their first case examine. Throughout a secret operation on 8 October 1958, Senning positioned the pacemaker in Arne’s stomach wall with two leads implanted within the myocardium, a layer of muscle within the wall of the center. The system lasted just a few hours. However its alternative, which occurred to be the one spare on the time, labored completely for six weeks after which on and off for a number of extra years.
Arne Larsson clearly was proud of the advance the pacemaker made to his high quality of life as a result of he endured 25 extra operations over his lifetime to switch every failing pacemaker with a brand new, improved iteration. He managed to survive each Elmqvist and Senning, lastly dying on the age of 86 on 28 December 2001. Because of the technological intervention of his quite a few pacemakers, his coronary heart by no means gave out. His reason for dying was pores and skin most cancers.
At the moment, greater than one million individuals worldwide have pacemakers implanted annually, and an implanted system can last as long as 15 years earlier than needing to get replaced. (Some pacemakers within the Eighties used nuclear batteries, which may final even longer, however the radioactive materials was problematic. See “The Unlikely Revival of Nuclear Batteries.”) Moreover, some pacemakers additionally incorporate a defibrillator to shock the center again to a traditional rhythm when it will get too far out of sync. This lifesaving system actually has come a great distance from its humble begin in a shoe polish tin.
Rune Elmqvist’s legacy
At any time when I begin researching the article of the month for Previous Ahead, I by no means know the place the story will take me or the way it may hit house. My dad lived with congestive coronary heart failure for greater than 20 years and completely beloved his pacemaker. He had a fantastic relationship together with his technician, Francois, they usually labored collectively to fine-tune the system and maximize its advantages. And similar to Arne Larsson, my dad died from an unrelated trigger.
An engineer to the core, he would have delighted in studying concerning the historical past of this incredible invention. And he most likely would have been tickled by the truth that the identical individual additionally invented the inkjet printer. My dad was not a fan of inkjets, however I’m certain he would have enormously admired Rune Elmqvist, who noticed issues that wanted fixing and got here up with elegantly engineered options.
A part of a persevering with sequence historic artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of expertise.
An abridged model of this text seems within the September 2025 print problem.
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