Celebrating the 100th Birthday of the Electrocardiogram: Lessons Learned From ECG Monitoring Research

In 1902, a Dutch physiologist, Willem Einthoven, invented the first ECG machine and recorded limb leads I, II, and III in a human, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. In the ensuing 100 years, an explosion of knowledge in the field of electrocardiography has sparked technological advances, including pacemakers, defibrillation, invasive cardiac electrophysiology testing, implantable cardioverter defibrillators, radio-frequency ablation, trans-telephonic transmission of ECG signals, and much more.