SKIRMISHER

By mistake, he grabbed the wrong resistor from a box and plugged it into the circuit he was making. The circuit pulsed for 1.8 milliseconds and then stopped for 1 second and then repeated. Greatbatch recognized the lub-dub rhythm.

“I stared at the thing in disbelief,” he said. This was exactly what was needed to drive a sick human heart! For the next five years, most of the world’s pacemakers used that simple blocking oscillator design — just because of Greatbatch’s accident.

– from Wilson Greatbatch’s accidental invention of the electronic pacemaker.

Stumble it!