Forrest Bird’s invention, the respirator, has saved millions and, at age 88, he’s still living his life to the fullest, flying his planes and working long days. Morley Safer reports. Click here to watch the recent 60 Minutes report about this remarkable man to whom many of us owe our lives or those of our family members.
Over the last eight decades, Bird has seen enough history and rubbed elbows with enough legends to rival that other Forrest, Forrest Gump. … His brainchild, the modern medical respirator, has given the breath of life to countless people around the world. It all began with a gizmo he cobbled together long ago to help a friend with emphysema breathe.
“I went to the hardware store and got a doorknob. You can see this doorknob right here at the top,” Bird explains. “So the patient would push down like this on the doorknob and blow their lungs up. He did remarkably well with it.”
The year was 1947 and Bird says he didn’t have the “foggiest” idea that he was on the trail of inventing a device that would become one of the most routine parts of emergency medicine. “I mean, this was seeing a problem and coming up with a rudimentary answer, that was all,” he says.
And that answer came from one of this tinkerer’s many passions: aviation. Bird is an old flyboy who still takes to the skies in a souped-up 1938 Piper Cub that belonged to his father.
“My daddy was a World War I pilot, and I just wanted to be able to fly like he did,” Bird says.
Bird spent World War II delivering aircraft from the factory to the front, and got to thinking along the way about the similarities between air flowing over the wings of a plane and air moving through the human lung.
“In that lung is rudimentary air foils. It’s like a million airplane wings all down through the lungs. In and out, all the way through, that facilitate your normal, spontaneous breathing. So it was just applying all this,” Bird explains. “Taking it from aviation.” …
There’s much more to this story, be sure the visit the 60 Minutes site by clicking here, or watch the video by clicking here to get the rest of the story.
