How a car battery shaped heart care

​​One of the earliest concepts of a portable cardiac pacemaker was powered by a car battery, an improvised response to a hospital blackout that left patients’ lives suddenly at risk.

​The device was crude, yet inventive. In October 1957, a power outage at a Minnesota hospital left patients who relied on pacemakers plugged into electrical outlets in an impossible position.

​Earl Bakken, an inventor and co-founder of Medtronic, who had long been fascinated by electricity and the human body, was asked to help. He believed electrical current could do more than shock or illuminate — it could restore rhythm and function of the heart, and even life itself.

​At first, Bakken experimented with a car battery, but his work quickly evolved into a battery-powered pacemaker. The improvised device helped patients at the University of Minnesota hospital, and its invention is considered by many to be the genesis of the medical device industry, marking a radical shift in how the heart could be treated.

​Not long after, Bakken began thinking about other applications of electricity within the human body. In the 1960s, he sketched what became known as his 100-year plan, a blueprint for the future of healthcare technology that was wildly imaginative for its time — and surprisingly accurate.

​The plan outlined ideas that, then, bordered on science fiction: implantable pacemakers, telemetry, and defibrillators. Decades later, many of those concepts are no longer hypothetical. They are expressed across a range of Medtronic technologies designed to help hearts beat more like nature intended.

​“I don’t even think Earl could have imagined how far the technology has come,” said Tim Laske, vice president of new product development for Cardiac Ablation Solutions at Medtronic and a former colleague of the late engineer.

Smaller, smarter cardiac pacemakers

​Bakken’s first pacemaker has given way to therapies that are smaller, smarter, and more deeply integrated with the body. Some work from outside the heart, others from within, but all are shaped by a growing understanding of the heart’s electrical system.

​One example is the Aurora EV-ICD™ system, which treats dangerously fast heart rhythms that can lead to lifethreatening events like sudden cardiac arrest. Unlike traditional transvenous defibrillators, the device’s lead is placed under the sternum, outside of the heart and veins; it senses, paces, and corrects chaotic rhythms without ever entering the heart.

​The device was invented by Amy Thompson, senior director of clinical research in defibrillation solutions at Medtronic, who said it ushered in a new paradigm in defibrillation.

​“What I love about the Aurora EV-ICD is the potential it has to impact patients,” Thompson said. “We can protect people who should not or cannot have leads in the heart, and we have the potential to impact patients for the better by keeping hardware out of the heart and vasculature.”

​Nearly ten years earlier, that same spirit of pushing technology closer to solving the problem reshaped cardiac pacing, too.

​“The same miniaturization that took something plugged into a wall and turned it into something you could hold in your hand is how we eventually got to a pacemaker that fits entirely inside the heart,” said Wade Demmer, vice president of research and development for cardiac pacing therapies at Medtronic.

​Devices like Micra™, the world’s smallest pacemaker and about the size of a vitamin, represent decades of engineering progress, distilling life sustaining therapy into something so small, patients often forget it’s there. For Demmer, that is a sign the technology is doing its job.

​“The best outcome,” he said, “is when a device makes someone forget that they’re sick.”

​Still, not every heart rhythm problem can be solved through pacing or protection alone.

​“If you think of bad actors within the heart, there are heart cells that are behaving improperly,” Laske said. “They may be firing out of order, they may be creating chaos so that the heart is not pumping properly.”

​In those cases, the goal is not simply to manage the rhythm, but to eliminate the source of the disruption. Through the Affera™ mapping and ablation system, physicians can identify and target the specific cells responsible. Using a newer approach called pulsed field ablation, doctors deliver precise energy that shuts down those cells while leaving the rest of the heart untouched.

Through an approach called pulsed field ablation, doctors deliver precise energy to target cells causing chaos in the heart.

​Taken together, therapies like defibrillation, pacing, and ablation reflect the future Bakken envisioned decades ago: not just intervening when the heart fails, but working with its electrical system to restore something closer to its natural state.

​Who was Earl Bakken?

​As a child growing up in Minnesota, Bakken fostered an early fascination with electricity. Inspired by the film “Frankenstein,” he even created an electroshock device to ward off bullies in school.

​Medtronic (think: medical + electronic) was started in a garage, where Bakken and his brother-in-law, Palmer Hermundslie, repaired medical equipment for hospitals. When the 1957 power outage exposed the fragility of wall-plugged pacemakers, Bakken was asked to invent a solution.

​First, he experimented with a car battery, said Curator of Exhibits & Collections at The Bakken Museum Adrian Fischer. Then he remembered a transistorized circuit sketch of a metronome he had seen in a popular electronics magazine.

​Within weeks, Bakken invented a battery powered pacemaker. Later in life, Bakken became a pacemaker patient himself.

​The idea of using electricity to improve quality of life was something Bakken found endlessly compelling. Fischer said Bakken’s ability to think ahead of his time stemmed from an instinct to connect ideas that didn’t yet belong together.

​“It’s about putting together things that had no connection before, and then all of a sudden, creating something new out of it,” Fischer said. “Take existing content and put it into a new context and you have a pretty good chance for an innovative thing.”

​For Demmer, innovation doesn’t end with what is technically possible.

​“We’ve done a great job for one group of patients,” Demmer said. “The real question is: who else could benefit from this technology that isn’t getting it yet?”

​Leading technical minds at Medtronic agree there’s more to do.

​“Some of the biggest problems in healthcare haven’t been solved yet,” Laske said. “The world still needs solutions for diseases like cancer, coronary artery disease, and global inequity in healthcare. Innovation is required not only in coming up with new products, but in how do we treat the world?”

​The next era of cardiac care

​Bakken’s vision continues to unfold, and Medtronic engineers say the work in bringing Bakken’s blueprint to life is far from done.

​“When I look at the 100-year plan, I see his example, and maybe his expectation, that all of us challenge ourselves to think beyond the arc of our career — beyond the arc of our life — to imagine what technology looks like for our kids’ and our grandkids’ future and then to take tangible steps in that direction,” Thompson said.

​That spirit still defines the next era of the heart: not just advancing what’s possible but expanding who it’s possible for.​

Published on April 29, 2026