Medical apparatus, cardiac pacemaker with titanium case, made by Telectronics Pty Ltd, Australia, 1973

Sydney company, manufacturing items such as pacemakers, c.1974.

The Australian company Telectronics has had a major influence on the world-wide development of modern cardiac pacemakers. The company was founded by pioneer in medical electronics, Noel Gray, from Crookwell, NSW. It began as a sole trader in Sydney in 1961 and was incorporated in 1963. Its first medical product was an external defibrillator for electrically restoring normal heart rhythm. 

In 1965 Gray established Australia's first manufacturing facility for producing pacemakers that were designed in-house. Working in collaboration with leading university teaching hospitals in Australia, and assisted by a grant from the National Heart Foundation of Australia, Telectronics developed innovations for implantable pacemakers that went on to become world standards. These early innovations included narrowing the stimulating impulse given to the heart to 0.5 milliseconds; encapsulating the pacemaker in titanium instead of epoxy; using a microplasma weld to join the two halves of the pacemaker capsule; creating a 'demand' pacemaker that speeded up the delivery of impulses to the heart if the patient's physical exertion increased; and isolating the pacemaker's battery in a separate compartment to deal with the problem of leaking mercury-zinc batteries.

By 1986 Telectronics had become the major subsidiary of Nucleus Ltd, an Australian high technology health products group. Specialising in the research, development, production and sale of cardiac pacemakers and implantable defibrillators, the company was floated as Telectronics Holdings Ltd that year. At the time it was No 5 pacemaker company in the world, with production sites in North America, South America, Europe and Australia. Sale of shares was expected to raise the money that would enable it to become No 3. At the same time a $AU 1.2 million public interest grant was provided by the Australian federal government for clinical development of the company's defibrillator.

By 1995 Telectronics Pacing Systems, now a US subsidiary of Pacific Dunlop, had indeed become the third largest US manufacturer of heart pacemakers. But in 1994-1997 Pacific Dunlop was hit by litigation in world-wide class actions after patients were found to have been fitted with defective heart pacemaker lead wires between 1987 and 1994. In 1996 Pacific Dunlop sold the Telectronics Pacing Systems business to St Jude Medical Inc. of the USA for $170 million. Shortly afterwards the Telectronics brand name was included when St Jude sold Medtel, a medical products distribution business, to Getz Brothers and Co Inc of California in 1997.

Telectronics Pty Ltd

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

86/1287 Pacemaker, medical apparatus, titanium / rubber, Telectronics Pty Ltd, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 1973

Instrument planted under the skin to control the rate of the heartbeat.

POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

Pacemaker by Telectronics Pty Ltd

Object No. 86/1287

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