(Courtesy of Medtronic) At the time, pacemakers were “crude devices,” with wires coming out of the person’s body and “they were susceptible like anything that uses wall power,” said ...

Medtronic—derived from combining the terms "medical" and "electronic"—was formed in a Minneapolis garage by Earl Bakken (who ...

Roughly the size of a small paperback book, the external pacemaker was also Medtronic’s first product. Shortly after Bakken’s ...