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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to many people and organizations for encouraging and facilitating my work on the technologies and practices of heart-rhythm management. John G. Truxal and Marian Visich Jr. started me on a first-rate intellectual adventure when they commissioned me in 1989 to write a brief monograph about the pacemaker for the series they edited in the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s New Liberal Arts Program. Faculty development grants from Carleton College freed me to conduct research and interviews and to attend medical conventions. I thank Elizabeth McKinsey, the dean of the college, for her support and interest. Arthur Norberg extended the hospitality of the Charles Babbage Institute for the History of Computing at the University of Minnesota during a formative stage of my research in 1991. Help, suggestions, and information were provided by numerous physicians —Drs. Agustin Castellanos, William Chardack, Howard W. Frank, Seymour Furman, W. Bruce Fye, Jerry C. Griffin, Samuel W. Hunter, Richard E. Kerber, C. Walton Lillehei, James D. Maloney, Victor Parsonnet , Ronald E. Vlietstra, and Paul M. Zoll—and nurse-specialist Susan L. Song. Drs. Parsonnet, Laurence M. Epstein, and David W. Hayes permitted me to observe pacemaker and ICD implantations at close range. Several engineers, inventors, and business leaders discussed innovation and competition in the heart-rhythm management industry with me. I particularly want to thank Earl E. Bakken, Alan D. Bernstein, Wilson Greatbatch , Ron Hagenson, Jerry Hartlaub, Thomas E. Holloran, J. Walter Keller, and Peter Tarjan. Chicago patent attorney Edward W. Remus gave me a crash course on patenting and patent litigation in the medical-device industry. As work on the book progressed, it often seemed that heart-rhythm management was changing so rapidly that it would elude my attempt to make sense of it. Patrik Hidefjäll, Dr. Joel D. Howell, Kai N. Lee, Robert C. Post, David J. Rhees, and anonymous readers for Technology and xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Culture and the Johns Hopkins University Press helped me clarify my interpretive ideas. At the office of the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology (NASPE), Dorothy Kelleher and Janet Giroux made the NASPE Oral History Collection available for my use. Several pacemaker and ICD patients talked to me about their experiences with heart-rhythm disorders and implanted devices. Elmer A. Braun, Wesley Johnson, and Helen Johnson graciously consented to my using parts of their accounts in this book. I am greatly indebted to the staff of the Biomedical Library at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, and to Steve Rasmussen, director of the Medtronic Library in Fridley, Minnesota, and his staff. I would also like to thank the staffs of the Bakken Library and Museum of Electricity in Life, Minneapolis; the Guidant/CPI library in Arden Hills, Minnesota; the Baker Library at Harvard Business School; the library at Heart House in Bethesda, Maryland; the James J. Hill Reference Library in St. Paul; and the Laurence McKinley Gould Library at Carleton College. Kristine Altenhafen, Ruth Freiman, J. Walter Keller, Nikki Lamberty, Karen Larson, Carol Lindahl, Dr. Berndt Lüderitz, Patti Peltier, and George Szarka helped me track down hard-to-find people, publications, and photographs. Bruce Thomas of the Carleton College Physics Department helped me breadboard Wilson Greatbatch’s blocking oscillator circuit from the Chardack-Greatbatch implantable pacemaker of 1960. Careful readings of the manuscript by Linda Picone and Frances Long caught numerous awkward or unclear sentences. This book draws on papers that I have previously published in the journals Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology (NASPE), Cardiology Clinics (W. B. Saunders), Technology and Culture (Society for the History of Technology), Invention and Technology (Forbes), and Circulation (American Heart Association ), and the book Exposing Electronics (Harwood). The opportunity to form friendships with men and women involved with cardiac pacing and defibrillation has been for me the most satisfying part of working on this book. Drs. Arthur Linenthal and Stafford I. Cohen, both associates of Paul Zoll, faithfully kept track of my progress and offered many helpful insights. It was a privilege to collaborate on a historical paper with Dr. Victor Parsonnet and to work with Dr. Seymour Furman on the NASPE Oral History Committee. Patrik Hidefjäll, a fellow explorer in the world of implantable medical devices, contacted me in 1995 while working on his doctoral dissertation in technology studies at the Linköping University in Sweden. When he visited the United States later that year, we jointly interviewed several key industry leaders. We have shared ideas ever since; I...

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