STARS: Pacemakers [Scanning Our Past]

This month we continue a series of reprints from the IEEE Global History Network's STARS articles. STARS is an online compendium of invited, peer-reviewed articles on the history of major developments in electrical and computer science and technology. Some light editing has been done, along with the addition of a few illustrations, to make the article more suitable for a journal publication. This article provides a brief history of the artificial cardiac pacemaker, a truly significant technological achievement of engineers, scientists, and doctors that has benefited humanity.