What I wanted to talk about today is this life-saving device called an Automated External Defibrillator. It has become the number one way to resuscitate a person who has had cardiac arrest without emergency medical services attending and who is still in persistent ventricular fibrillation or ventricular tachycardia. Many people played an important role in creating this device to become more efficient, smaller and easier to use for the general public. Here are just to name a few who played a role in the creation of this device: Claude Beck, James Rand, Paul Zoll and Frank Pantridge. The first use of a defibrillator on a patient occurred in 1947 on a 14-year-old boy. Claude Beck was performing open-chest surgery when the boy went into fibrillation. Beck manually massaged his heart for 45 minutes until the defibrillator arrived. The defibrillator he used during surgery was made by James Rand and had silver plates the size of large teaspoons. In 1956 Paul Zoll performed the first successful external defibrillation with a more powerful defibrillator. A major breakthrough in emergency medicine occurred in 1965. At the time, most coronary deaths occurred outside of the hospital setting because defibrillators required a main power source and were only available in hospitals, there made them virtually useless for saving lives outside of a hospital. placement. Frank Pantridge, often called the father of emergency medicine, made the first portable defibrillator in 1965. This device was powered by a car battery and weighed approximately 70 kg (155 lb). In 1968 he managed to create a defibrillator that was safer to use and weighed only 3kg (6-7lbs). It was argued that there was a possibility of misuse of the device if given to a... means of paper...... AED & Defibrillation: AED - AEDGRANT.COM ~ GRANTMONEY FOR FREE AED!!! ~ AED Grant for Individuals and Organizations. (2003, February 13). History of AEDs and Defibrillation: AEDs - AEDGRANT.COM ~ FREE AED GRANT!!! ~ AED Grant for Individuals and Organizations. Retrieved January 20, 2014, from http://www.aedgrant.com/aed-history.htmNCBI. (2005, April 2). Frank Pantridge. Frank Pantridge. Retrieved January 20, 2014, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC555899/Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. (2011, December 2). What is an automatic external defibrillator?. - NHLBI, NIH. Retrieved January 20, 2014, from http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/aed/Virtual Museum EMS History. (2011, August 11). Professor Frank Pantridge. Retrieved January 20, 2014, from http://www.emsmuseum.org/virtual-museum/history/articles/399784-Professor-Frank-Pantridge