Today, an unexpected invention from an unexpected
inventor. The University of Houston's College of
Engineering presents this series about the machines
that make our civilization run, and the people
whose ingenuity created them.
How do you suppose Charles
Lindbergh managed to fly the Atlantic? So much is
said about his courage and determination. He had
rare nerve, no doubt. But not enough is said about
his mind. Lindbergh did what others couldn't do
because he knew machines. He had a big hand in
designing the highly specialized Spirit of
St. Louis that took him to France.
We've all but forgotten the medical work Lindbergh
did a few years later. In 1930 a relative suffered
heart trouble. Doctors couldn't operate without
stopping the heart, but that would kill him. That
struck Lindbergh as a solvable problem. So he
talked to Alexis Carrel, who held the Nobel Prize
for his work in organ transplants and suturing
blood vessels.
Carrel was respected, but he was odd. His operating
room was solid black. So was operating room dress.
Author Christopher Hallowell tells us that he
"flirted with arcane mysticism" and that he
harbored bizzare racial theories. Well, Lindbergh
was an odd enough duck himself. He alienated people
before the war with his isolationist ideas. In any
case, the two took a real shine to each other.
Carrel was already asking if an external blood pump
couldn't sustain the body while he operated on the
heart. Lindbergh studied the problem and quietly
went off to the Princeton University glass blower.
Two weeks later he came back with his own blood
pump. Carrel was delighted and invited Lindbergh to
continue work in his laboratory.
Lindbergh did. He produced a series of pumps that
didn't quite work. In 1935, after his son was
kidnapped and murdered, he finally produced a
working blood pump. He also produced a lot of the
supporting technology. He'd made a centrifuge to
separate blood plasma without damaging it.
Carrel sang the praises of the work. Here he is
with Lindbergh on the cover of a 1938
Time magazine, admiring the pump. The
press wrote about transplants and implants and the
medical miracles right around the corner. Maybe the
pump itself could be miniaturized and used to
replace the human heart.
Then WW-II began, and both men walked away from the
technology. Most of the pumps were broken up for
the platinum in them. During the war, Carrel died
of heart failure. Lindbergh flew combat missions in
the Pacific.
Today the artificial heart is a reality. But it
embodies a technology that was given its jump-start
by that strange and unexpected pair of pioneers,
Charles Lindbergh and Alexis Carrel.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
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