Forrest Bird

Forrest Morton Bird (1921 to 2015) was an American aviator, inventor and biomedical engineer, best known for creating some of the first reliable mass-produced mechanical ventilators. Born in Stoughton, Massachusetts, he flew solo at fourteen and entered active duty with the United States Army Air Corps in 1941, when he studied a pressure breathing oxygen regulator from a captured German bomber and improved it into the standard high-altitude regulator for military aircraft. He then studied medicine to understand the body under stress and developed respirators, releasing the Bird Mark 7 ventilator in 1957 and later a ventilator for infants, devices that helped cut breathing-related infant mortality sharply. His company, Bird Oxygen Breathing Equipment, later Bird Corporation, was sold to 3M in 1978. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1995 and received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2009.