A private exhibition · filings 1993–2025 · grants 1996–2026
The Sealed
Machine
Fifty-six United States patents by David A. Ruben of Medtronic — thirty-three years of the quiet engineering that lets electronics live inside the human body, and keep their promise there for decades.
Exhibit A · US5885471A · granted 1999 · cited 203 times
The record does not need embellishing. His work is cited by Boston Scientific, BIOTRONIK, Verily (Google), Lockheed Martin, and IBM — rivals, aerospace, and computing alike, borrowing from an implant engineer’s toolbox.
The exhibition · six rooms, hung in order of first filing
Walk the lines of work.
1993: The First Housing
Sealing electronics inside the body
The Accelerometer Line: teaching the pacemaker to feel motion
Pressure, motion, and chemistry, measured from inside
The Laser Craft: light as a precision tool
Welding, bonding, cutting, texturing with light
The Feedthrough Line: wiring through an unbroken wall
Sealing electronics inside the body
The Nuclear Line: reviving the atomic heartbeat
Batteries that outlive their patients' need
The Valve: engineering mercy for hydrocephalus
Fluid physics and position sensing in the OR and the brain
Appendix · the complete record
All fifty-six grants, catalogued.
Six clusters, thirty-three years, every patent number linked to the public record. The full catalogue is the exhibition’s spine.
An implantable device is a promise: nothing leaks in, nothing leaks out, for a decade or more, in warm salt water. These are the papers of a man who spent a working life keeping it.
For Dad · Bakken Fellow, Medtronic