Millions of people around the world have a grateful reason that Swedish engineer Run Eleamist decided not to practice the drug. Although qualified as a doctor, he chose to invent medical equipment instead. In 1949, he applied while working in Elma-Shondar (later Siemens-Elma) in Stockholm A patent For MingographFirst inkjet printer. Its movable nozzle deposited an electrostatic controlled jet of ink drops on a spool of paper.
Run Elmist qualified to become a physician, but he dedicated his career to develop medical equipment like this galvanometer.Hakan Elmist/Wikipedia
The Eleamist performed Mingographs at the first International Congress of Cardiology in Paris in 1950. It can record physical signals from a patient’s electrocardiogram or electroncephalogram in real time, which supports doctors in diagnosing heart and brain conditions. Eight years later, he worked with a cardiac surgeon Åke Sening The first to develop the implanted pacemaker. So whether you are running a document through an inkjet printer or living your best life due to pacemaker, inventive Dr. Give an indication of praise to the almakist.
World’s first inkjet printer
Run Elmist was a curious person. While there is still a student, he invented a special potentials to measure pH and a portable multichanal electrocardiograph. In 1940, he became the head of development in the Swedish Medical Electronics Company Elma-Shondar.
Prior to Mingograph, electrocardiograph machines trusted a writing stylus to detect waves on a moving roll of paper. But friction between stylus and paper prevented small changes in electrical signal being accurately recorded. The initial design of ELMQVIST was a modified oscillograph. Traditionally, an oscillograph used a mirror to reflect a photographic film or a ray of light on paper (changed by electrical signal). The ELMQVIST transplanted the mirror for a small, movable glass nozzle, which continuously sprayed a thin stream of liquid on a spool of paper. Electrical signals controlled the jet electrostically.
Mingographs originally were used to record electrocardiograms of heart patients. It was soon found in many other areas.Siemens Healthyers Historical Institute
By eliminating the friction of a stylus, Mingographs (which the company had marketed as a mingograph) was able to record more wide changes of heartbeat. The machine had three paper-feed speed: 10, 25 and 50 millimeters per second. The speed in the operation can be predetermined or replaced.
An analog input jack on the mingograph can be used to measure from other devices. Researchers took advantage of this input to record this input or sound in subjects far away from medicines. The phonetic people used it to examine the acoustic aspects of the speech, and the zoologists used it to record Birdsong. During the second part of the 20th century, scientists in their research papers cited Mingograph as a tool for their experiments.
Today, Mingograph is not widely known, but the underlying technology, inkjet printing, is omnipresent. Inkjets dominate the home printer market, and special printers print DNA microere in labs for genomics research, make electrical marks for printed circuit boards, and more, as Philipw W. Barth and Leslie A. Field describes its 2024 IEEE Spectrum The article “Inkjets are just for more than printing.”
The world’s first implanted pacemaker
Despite the influence of mingographs on the development of printing, it is not certainly the most important innovation of the almist. Mingographs helped doctors to diagnose the state of the heart, but it could not save the life of a patient itself. One of the other inventions of ELMQVIST and did and performed: the first completely transplantable, rechargeable pacemaker.
The first implanted pacemaker (left) of 1958 was a battery that needed to be recharged once a week. The 1983 pacemaker (right) was programable, and its battery lasted for many years.Siemens Healthyers Historical Institute
Like many stories in the history of technology, it was pushed to the insistence of a woman, in the matter and on the insistence of Mary Larsen. The 43-year-old husband of the other-Mary, Arne, was suffering from his heart tissue marks due to a viral infection. His heart beats so slowly that he continuously lost consciousness, a condition known as Stokes-Adam Syndrome. Els-Mary refused to accept his death sentence and discovered an alternative. After reading a newspaper article about an experimental implanted pacemaker being developed by Almist and Sening at Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, she decided that her husband would be the right candidates to test it, even if that point was only tried on animals.
External pacemaker – that is, the equipment outside the body regulated the heartbeat by applying electrical heartbeat – already present, but they were heavy, heavy and uncomfortable. An early model plugged into a wall socket directly, so the user puts an electric shock at risk.
Comparatively, the almoist’s pacemaker was quite small to be transplanted into the body and no shock raised. Attached to an epoxy resin, the disc shaped device had a diameter of 55 mm and a thickness of 16 mm-the dimensions of the Kiwi shoe polish tin in which the almakist first molded the prototype. It used silicon transistor to speed up a pulse with dimensions of 2 volts and a period of 1.5 milliseconds, at the rate of 70 to 80 beats per minute (average adult heart rate).
The two rechargeable 60-silmils arranged in the pacemaker chain went on the nickel-cadmium battery. A silicon diode connected the battery to a coil antenna. A 150 kilohrtz radio loop antenna outside the body partially charged the battery through the skin. The allegation lasted for about a week, but it took 12 hours to recharge. Imagine to stay for a long time.
In 1958, 30 years before this photo, Arne Larsen (right) received the first implantable pacemaker, developed by Roon Elempist (left) in Siemens-Elma. Åke Sening (Center) underwent surgery.Sjöberg bildbyrå/ullstein bilde/gati image
The persuasion and perseverance of Els-Mary pushed the almist and Sening to move from animal tests to human tests, which is their first case study with arne. During a secret operation on 8 October 1958, Sening placed the pacemaker with two leads in the abdominal wall of the arne, which was transplanted into the myocardium, which is a layer of muscles in the heart wall. The device lasted only for a few hours. But its replacement, which was the only additional at that time, worked completely for six weeks and then for several more years.
Arne Larsen stayed for another 43 years after 43 years after his first pacemaker was transplanted. It is shown here that he has received five pacemakers he has received. Sjöberg bildbyrå/ullstein bilde/gati image
Arne Larsen was clearly happy with the improvement made by the pacemaker for the quality of his life as he ended 25 more operations in his lifetime to replace each unsuccessful pacemaker with a new, better repetition. He finally managed to underline both the almakist and the sanning Dying at the age of 86 On 28 December 2001. Thanks to the technical intervention of many of his pacemakers, his heart never gave. The cause of his death was skin cancer.
Today, more than a million people worldwide have been transplanted to pacemakers each year, and can last up to 15 years before the need to replace a transplanted tool. (In the 1980s, some pacemakers used atomic batteries, which could last long, but radioactive materials were problematic. See “unexpected revival of atomic batteries.”) In addition, some pacemakers also include a defibrillator to blow the heart back to a normal rhythm when it is far away from the sync. This lifestyle device has definitely traveled a long way from its humble start in a shoe Polish tin.
Run almist’s legacy
Whenever I start researching the month’s object for the past, I never know where the story will take me or how it can come to the house. My father lived with heart failure for more than two decades and loved his pacemaker. He had a great relationship with his technician, Francois, and worked together to fix the device and maximize its benefits. And like the Anene Larsen, my father died due to an unrelated reason.
An engineer for the core, he would be happy to know about the history of this magnificent invention. And he probably tickled the fact that the same person also invented the inkjet printer. My father was not a fan of the inkjates, but I am sure he would have praised the run almist very much, who saw problems that needed to solve and elegantly came with engineer solutions.
Part of Verification series Given historical artifacts that embrace the immense capacity of technology.
A brief version of this article appears in the September 2025 print issue.
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