Beacon Earl (Earl Bakken)

Beacon Earl (Earl Bakken)

Earl Bakken is the American electrical engineer, the businessman and the philanthropist. In 1949 in the garage he founded Medtronic company in which afterwards (in 1957) created the first electropacemaker with a power supply from rechargeable batteries.

Biography

1949: Creation of Medtronic

At the time of foundation of the company in 1949 Earl Bakken was the graduate student of the University of Minnesota and specialized in electrical equipment. Also he was engaged in repair of the laboratory equipment requiring special approach in city hospital of Minneapolis. Soon, doctors asked it to be engaged also in design and creation of new samples of the equipment.

1975: Creation of the museum

In 1975 Earl Bakken created the museum Minneapolis in which the main attention is paid to history of electricity and magnetism and their use in medicine.

2018: Death at the age of 94 years

Earl Bakken died on October 21, 2018 in the house in Kailua-Kohn in Hawaii. It was 94 years.

Earl Bakken is known on creation of Medtronic company which by October, 2018 costs more than $129 billion, and its number of staff exceeds 86 thousand human.

The contribution which was made by Earl in the field of medical equipment just cannot be revaluated — the chairman of the board of directors and the CEO of Medtronic Omar Ishrac says. — Its spirit will live with us until we execute a mission which it delivered nearly 60 years ago — to relieve pain, to recover health and to prolong life … Earl was this pioneer in health care, and its vision regarding use of technologies for the help to people inspires us to this day.

At Bakken was several implanted medical devices, stents, insulin pumps and pacemakers of Medtronic.

On the website of Medtronic the memorial page devoted to Bakken was created. There it is told about his life and achievements and also several photos, including old are published.^[1]

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