Forrest Bird life and biography

Forrest Bird is an American aviator, inventor and biomedical engineer. He is best known for creating some of the first reliable mass-produced mechanical ventilators for acute and chronic cardiopulmonary care.

As his first wife was diagnosed with emphysema, he developed the first commercially viable medical respirator in 1964. A related invention, the BABYbird neonatal respirator, was released in 1969, bringing the death rate for babies with respiratory distress from 65% down to 10%. Bird sold his business to 3M in 1978. He has retired to Idaho, where he operates the "Bird Aviation and Invention Museum" and owns two dozen aircraft.

Forrest Bird Timeline:

1935: Flew his first solo flight as a pilot, age 14
1941: Enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps
1955: Release of the Bird Universal Medical Respirator
1985: Lifetime Scientific Achievement Award
1995: Inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame
2001: Named Inventor of the Week by MIT
2005: Lifetime Scientific Achievement Award
2007: Bird Aviation and Invention Museum in Sagle, Idaho Grand Opening
2009: Cardinal Health Inc., a Fortune 20 company based in Dublin, Ohio, is spun from its parent company to the wholly owned subsidiary, CareFusion Corp. The year before, Cardinal Health relocated three sister companies to the Palm Springs operation: Bear Medical of Riverside, SensorMedics Corp. of Yorba Linda and EME Medical of Brighton, England.
2010: Meg Whitman makes a campaign stop at CareFusion in Palm Springs and tells employees the state lags behind other states in business friendliness.
July 13: Employees are told the plant will close in phases over about 18 months. The first phase is January 2012.

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