Albert J. Morris, Morris Defibrillator Company

Jon Meador interviews Albert J. Morris (pictured above) on his career and experiences in May 2008 — watch interview now » (59:18) In addition to 1950-era film of the Morris defibrillator at work, the following includes film of a model of a ship stabilizer built by Albert J. Morris — watch video now » (6:11) Morris was a founder of Chadwick-Morris Ship Stabilization Engineering (involved in anti-roll stabilization of ships) during the same time frame as his founding of the Morris Defibrillator Company.

Morris' entrepreneurial career (what he refers to as “the first deadly sin“) was initiated by his cousin Milton S. Waldman, MD (1919-2003). Morris, having left the Navy where he served as an electronics officer, was the first civilian employee of the Navy's Office of Research and Inventions, which became the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Dr. Waldman, an anesthesiologist, was then in residence at the Veterans hospital in San Francisco and asked Morris if he could build a defibrillator.

Morris writes, “I had trouble even pronouncing the word. He told me this was a device for applying electric shock directly to the surface of the heart to stop ventricular fibrillation. Of course, he had to tell me what that was. He didn't have the slightest idea how to do this, but he did have a reference to an article in the journaI, Review of Scientific Instruments.

“Subsequently, I got that journal out of the Stanford Library. Then I told Milt that I could build this instrument, because it was simple. I then ‘scrounged’ the parts from the Stanford Electronics Laboratory, mounted them in a black metal box, then went to a local store and bought two stainless steel spatulas that are used for flipping pancakes, changed the handles and arranged for them to be plugged into the box. When I finished building this ‘kluge,’ Milt came down and he delivered the box to the VA hospital.

“At that time, the Stanford Medical School was housed in San Francisco, along with the University of California at San Francisco Medical School. A Stanford physician named Frank Gerbode was a cardiac specialist who practiced as a visiting cardiac surgeon at the VA Hospital. The defibrillator was intended for his use. Less than a month later, Milt called me and asked if I could build him another defibrillator. This time, I wouldn't scrounge the parts from Stanford. I told him it would cost about $50 to buy the parts; I still did not charge him for my labor. After Milt picked up the second unit, it was not long before he asked me for a third unit. I built him this unit for $100.

“By then my curiosity was piqued. Cardiac surgeons were apparently treating patients who sometimes went into ventricular fibrillation during cardiac surgery. They obviously found defibrillators useful: why was nobody building them? Because of my position with ONR, I was able to get medical students at both UCSF and Stanford to do a literature search. (This was no simple thing before the days of the internet.) They came up with hundreds of references of work by the Russians, Germans, French, etc. with the oldest article dating back to — believe it or not — 1785. This reference work included anecdotal reports by physicians who literally tore lamp cords out of lamps and applied the bare wires to people's chests when they collapsed on the floor.

“While there was no FDA in those days, there was an Underwriters Laboratories (UL), working for the people's good. Apparently, the UL would not approve the use of defibrillators in surgery, because the anesthetic gases then used were highly volatile and they were afraid that if a physician accidentally touched the electrodes together, while attempting defibrillation, it might cause an explosion. My simplistic reasoning in thinking about all this was that 'without defibrillation, the patient was dead.' If the patient was dead without defibrillation, then an accidental explosion due to defibrillation could not kill a patient again, so why not use a defibrillator and save the patient? Obviously, leading surgeons agreed with this simple thesis because they were choosing to use a defibrillator.

“I then reasoned that if I made defibrillators commercially, and I warned of the dangers of accidental sparks, the results of any problems would be their responsibility, not mine. How naive can one get? This reasoning led me to start the Morris Defibrillator Company [and] to design and have built a professionalized version of the 'Morris Defibrillator.''

From Hospital Topics Volume 30, Issue 9, 1952. View text of article

Morris created a one-page data sheet about his invention and obtained a list of 7,500 hospitals in the U.S. from the Hospital Association. His wife and her mother spent hours addressing, stuffing and mailing envelopes. “It is impossible for me to describe how unready and uninformed I was relative to creating a business,“ Morris continues. “I was so unknowing, that when I received an order in those days, I immediately sent out an invoice, long before shipping out the equipment. Still, most often, I got paid. And so, in the very first year I found that I had earned a net profit from the Morris Defibrillator Company exceeding my annual salary from ONR. I did none of the manufacturing or shipping myself. I would simply come home every night, look at my mail, and process the orders. It was only a short time later that I also got involved in pacemakers.

“The original pacemakers were external pacemakers. Voltage was applied by simply energizing two stick-on EKG type electrodes on a person's chest. And, it worked. I did all of the testing on myself, I did not use dogs or other animals. I found that I could take over and control my own heart rate externally. I could speed it up or slow it down at my own volition.

“I doubt that I would do anything like that today, knowing what I know, but in those days I guess I thought I knew everything. So I added pacemakers to the defibrillator line, and then offered combined defibrillators-pacemakers.”

In 1953, Morris, yielding to the urging of his friend Elliot Levinthal, merged the Morris Defibrillator Company into Levinthal Electronic Products. During the following years, through other acquistions and mergers, Morris focused more on electrical and electronic engineering products and services. A business decision he continues to regret “had to do with our cardiac resuscitation activities. In all the years I was involved closely in such activities, I always had the visceral feeling that I was doing some good in the world. I kept getting inputs from physicians, and even some patients, about how grateful they were that we were doing this pioneering work.

“Unfortunately, around 1960, I recommended that we sell our Medical Division. It was not contributing much to company profits and the ‘high-power electronics’ part of the business was doing very well. When the high-power electronics business became dominant in the company (it was reporting to me), Elliott Levinthal took over the medical portion of the business. I saw very little happening in the medical portion, and it bothered me. So, we sold the medical portion of the business to two people whom I had hired and trained, Elliott Farnsworth and Tom Corben, [and] they started Corben-Farnsworth. A few years later, that company sold out to Smith, Kline and French. They, in turn, sold out a few years later to Gould.

“Fortunately, what I started in 1949 evolved into companies like Medtronic and others, and the technology has evolved to the point where I am personally kept alive by an implanted cardioverter defibrillator (pacemaker built in) and a separate pacemaker. These devices have prolonged my life, so far some 20 years beyond that of my father, who died at 68. Clearly, I have benefitted greatly from my original work in cardiac resuscitation.”

Among his many accolades, in 1962, Morris was awarded the grade of Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science for “contributions to control systems (ship stabilization), medical electronics (defibrillators and pacemakers) and pulsed generators.”

Albert J. Morris Résumé

• Neural Systems Corporation Chairman of the Board (1990 - Present)
• President, BIOSYS, 1983-1989
• General Partner, Oklahoma Energy Partnerships, 78-E, 79-1. 79-II, 79-III, 80-I
• (1983) President and Board Chairman, Genesys Systems, Inc., 1967-1984
• General Partner RCLP #1 (Television Communications Systems)
• General Partner IMPACT (Medical Video Continuing Education)
• President and Chairman of Board, Energy Systems, 1963-1966
• President and Director, Radiation at Stanford, 1960-1963
• Director, Radiation, Inc. 1960-1963
• Chairman of Board, h nu Systems, Inc., 1964 (Founder)
• Senior Vice President, Levinthal Electronic Products, 1953-1960 (Co-Founder)
• President, Morris Defibrillator Co., 1950-1953 (Founder)
• Partner, Chadwick-Morris Ship Stabilization Engineering, 1952 (Co-Founder)
• Scientific Research Coordinator (Electronics), U.S.N. Office of Naval Research, 1946-1954
• Chairman, San Francisco Section, IEEE, 1954
• Chairman, San Francisco Council, WEMA, 1965
• Chairman of Board, WESCON, 1961 (Director 1957-1961)
• Commanding Officer, Volunteer Naval Research Reserve 12/3/53
• Chairman, San Francisco Chapter IEEE, Professional Group on Medical Electronics, 1952 (Founder)
• Research Associate, Stanford University, 1948-1952
• Commander, U.S.N.R. (Retired)
• Member, Engineering Advisory Council, University of California (1959-1967)
• Consultant to the following Colleges of Engineering: Bradley University, Colorado State University, Cornell University, Drexel University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Illinois Institute of Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Stanford University , U.C. Irvine, U.C., Berkeley, Univ. of Illinois, Circle Campus, Univ. of Massachusetts, Univ. of Southern California, University of Bridgeport, University of Houston, University of Maryland, University of Minnesota, University of Rochester
• Degrees: B.S. Engineering, Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1941
• M.S. Electronics, Stanford University, 1948
• Degree of Engineer (Electronics), Stanford Univ. 1950
  
  

Text of graphic above:
Defibrillators Can Now Be Purchased
In cases of cardiac arrest with ventricular fibrillation an electric shock from a defibrillator may be the only means of saving a patient. Such occasions are rare and applying electric shock is a last resort. But it recently saved the life of a girl whose heart stopped for an hour and 46 minutes while undergoing an operation in a Chicago hospital. In that case a team of three doctors opened her chest and took turns massaging her heart by hand until a home-made defibrillator was rushed into the operating room. Other doctors and hospitals have wanted defibrillators as an insurance against such emergencies. Defibrillators, however, haven't much of a commercial future—they don't cost much, practically never wear out, and only one is needed in a hospital. Sole world supplier is Albert J. Morris, an electronic engineer in Redwood City, Calif. Morris built his first in the Stanford University laboratory during his spare time. Morris incorporated what he considered the best features of existing, specially built defibrillators in his model. It is about the size of a small overnight bag, and operates on ordinary house current. Two flat, disc-shaped electrodes are held against each side of the heart. These administer shocks up to 135 volts and of as short duration as two hundredths of a second. So far 20-odd government and private hospitals throughout the country are equipped with Morris defibrillators.