We crowded together in the narrow passageway at the rear of the Medicine and Science collections storage area. Curator Judy Chelnick slowly opened a drawer in one of the gray metal cabinets and special guest Manny Villafaña’s eyes lit up. He exclaimed: "It’s like being a kid in a candy store!" Before him lay a group of small archival boxes nestled together, each holding a cardiac pacemaker or valve. Judy picked up items one by one for Manny to get a closer peek. She also showed him related objects in glass-fronted storage cabinets around the room. This was a highlight of Manny’s visit to the National Museum of American History in late March. He came to town in part to learn more about the Museum’s collections and why, how, and where we care for both three-dimensional objects and archival documents.
As he oohed and aahed about the array of medical collections, my colleague Chris Gauthier captured Manny’s expert commentary on video while I snapped photographs. Not only does Manny have great familiarity with these objects from his life-long career as an inventor and entrepreneur in the medical-device industry, but also he knows many of their inventors. For example, he had professional connections with the inventors behind two key artifacts for the Places of Invention exhibition’s “Medical Alley” story: a Medtronic 5800 externally wearable cardiac pacemaker and a Chardack-Greatbatch implantable pacemaker model.
Manny talked knowingly about the 5800, which was originally invented by Medtronic, Inc. co-founder Earl Bakken in 1957 and sold commercially starting in 1958 (thus the model number). Manny worked for Earl at Medtronic as its first international sales administrator before starting his first rival company, Cardiac Pacemakers Inc. At the latter, Manny worked closely with engineer Wilson Greatbatch, the inventor of the first successful implantable cardiac pacemaker named for him and surgeon William Chardack. The Chardack-Greatbatch pacemaker model dating from about 1961 has been in the Museum’s care for a long time. Medtronic recently donated the 5800 model dating from about 1972, along with two other recent cardiac pacemakers to help expand the medical sciences collections.
As part of Manny’s behind-the-scenes tour, archivist Alison Oswald welcomed him to the Museum’s vault to show him a range of archival materials. She explained why we save certain items and how we care for them, from inventors’ notebooks to paper prototypes to marketing brochures. He was surprised about the Archives Center’s interest in collecting ephemera, which the Society of American Archivists defines as “Materials, usually printed documents, created for a specific, limited purpose, and generally designed to be discarded after use….Examples of ephemera include advertisements, tickets, brochures, and receipts.” It got him thinking about how seemingly unimportant papers he has squirreled away might be worth saving. Alison gave him a copy of our Modern Inventors Documentation (MIND) Program brochure to take home for further consideration.
While he was here, we filmed Manny as he shared great stories about his personal collection of pacemakers and heart valves, including some objects he brought along in his jacket pockets. He pulled out a real gem, St. Jude Medical bileaflet mechanical heart valve serial number 1—“the industry’s gold standard”—that he co-invented. (Be sure to watch this video to see a later set of ATS heart valves, which he co-invented, used as cuff links!) Manny founded St. Jude Medical, Inc. in the 1970s and ATS Medical in the 1980s, and is now the CEO of his seventh company, Kips Bay Medical, Inc. In addition to the video footage of him discussing the Museum’s collections with Judy and talking about his own, I conducted a short video interview with Manny in the Lemelson Center. I asked him questions about his childhood and career, the history of the medical-device industry in Minnesota, and his relationships with some of the key Medical Alley pioneers like Bakken and Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, “the father of open-heart surgery.” Manny’s visit provided a wonderful opportunity to create video documentation to complement the Museum’s medical-device object and archival collections. We also look forward to featuring clips in the Places of Invention exhibition!
