Medtronic plc

Earl Bakken and Palmer Hermundslie form a partnership called Medtronic to service and repair medical equipment. Bakken develops the world's first small, wearable, battery-operated external pacemaker; company is incorporated as Medtronic, Inc. Medtronic purchases the exclusive rights to produce and market an implantable pacemaker known as the "Chardack-Greatbatch implantable pulse generator." Medtronic stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange; company establishes its Heart Valves Division and introduces the Medtronic Hall mechanical heart valve. Medtronic acquires Sofamor Danek Group, Arterial Vascular Engineering, and Xomed Surgical Products. MiniMed Inc., producer of devices for patients with diabetes, is acquired; company introduces InSync, the first electrical device for treating congestive heart failure. Medtronic, Inc. is the world's leading medical technology company, controlling more than half of the $8 billion global heart-pacing market, which includes pacemakers and defibrillators. The company's products and services also include implantable neurological pain, tremor, spasticity, and incontinence management systems; heart valves; catheters and stents for angioplasty; implantable drug administration systems; hydrocephalic shunts; autotransfusion equipment; disposable devices for handling and monitoring blood during surgery; and instruments and devices used in surgical procedures of the head and spine and by ear, nose, and throat physicians. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the company conducts business in more than 120 countries; some two-thirds of revenues are generated domestically, with 20 percent originating in Europe and 10 percent in the Asia-Pacific region. Medtronic was founded as an outgrowth of Earl Bakken's part-time work at Minneapolis's Northwestern Hospital. Although much of his time was consumed with graduate studies in electrical engineering, Bakken found time to repair the centrifuges, electrocardiograph machines, and other intricate electronic equipment at the hospital. Bakken and his brother-in-law, Palmer Hermundslie, surmised that they could make a living at repairing medical equipment. In 1949 Bakken quit school, and Hermundslie left his job at a local lumber company so that they could form the medical equipment repair service they dubbed "Medtronic." Bakken and Hermundslie initially worked out of a small garage in Minneapolis. During Medtronic's difficult first year, there was one month the business grossed a meager eight dollars. In 1950, however, the partners contracted as sales representatives for the Sanborn Company, the Gilford Instrument Company, and Advanced Instruments, Inc. In the early part of the decade more than half of their sales in the five-state region around Minneapolis came from selling the merchandise of the other companies. Medtronic's history became inextricably connected to the history of open-heart surgery. Electrically stimulated pacemaking had taken off in the 1950s when several physicians developed external machines that extended the lives of patients who otherwise would have died. These early pacemakers, however, had several disadvantages. The high-voltage electrodes they used often burned patients' skin, the devices were large and unmanageable, and they had to be plugged into the wall, thus restricting patients' mobility and making power failures life-threatening events. The growing company organized its distribution outside the United States and Canada through the employment of the Picker International Corporation of White Plains, New York. Picker specialized in electrical medical equipment sales and had an international network of 72 foreign sales offices. Fourteen Medtronic sales representatives covered the United States and Canada beginning in 1960. The company introduced several products that year, including the Telecor heart monitor; the Cardiac Sentinel, an alarm that automatically summoned aid when a patient's heart rate became critical