Physio-Control has been manufacturing emergency medical equipment for 60 years.

It all started when Karl William Edmark, a 30-year-old surgeon in 1954, was finishing his residency at the Lahey Clinic in Boston.

According to a detailed company brochure, seeing so many patients die on the operating table from cardiac arrest disturbed Edmark. At the time, there wasn’t any sort of electronic monitoring device to help doctors detect when a patient’s heart had stopped, the brochure stated. Not satisfied with the argument that there was nothing they could do, the brochure states that Edmark set about finding an electronic solution that would alert doctors to heart failure.

This marked the beginning of Physio-Control.

Since 1955, the company — which began in Seattle and opened its corporate headquarters to Redmond in 1974 — has been a “leader in the development, manufacture, sale and service of external defibrillator/monitors,” according to its website.

“Physio-Control is a valued, long-standing member of our community,” said Redmond Mayor John Marchione. “Their success in creating cardiac products that are sold throughout the world is a testament to the company’s leadership, and the creativity and commitment of their employees. I have seen the company grow and innovate over the years, and am honored that they have continued to make Redmond their corporate home.”

According to the company website, Physio-Control works with health-care providers to pursue new technologies to incorporate into its product line. The company’s goal is to manufacture emergency response tools to help clinicians and emergency responders, anywhere in the world, through the toughest kind of emergencies.

“We take our responsibilities seriously,” the website states. “When we say we work to help save lives, we mean it.”

Last Saturday, Physio-Control celebrated its 60th anniversary with an open house event that was a “tremendous success,” said company spokesperson Matt Fikse.

He said company team members, retirees and friends of the company coming from as far away as New Zealand attended the event.

“Guests even included the first employee hired by the company in 1955,” Fikse said. “More than 1,000 people attended and enjoyed a factory tour, a performance by the University of Washington Husky Marching Band and remarks from company leaders and visiting VIPs.”

He said one of the things many people enjoyed during the event was being able to catch up with old friends and colleagues and sharing stories of their work to help launch and develop the company and its products.

In addition, Fikse said Brian Bonlender, the director of the Washington State Department of Commerce, also spoke at the event and delivered a letter from Gov. Jay Inslee congratulating the company on its six decades of business and thanking the company for its service.

In his letter, Inslee said Washingtonians “are driven to invent, discover and imagine” and these are the foundations upon which Physio-Control was launched.

“Dr. Karl Edmark and the early team members were driven to invent – to create new lifesaving technologies such as the DC defibrillator, a tool that has become essential for emergency response teams and that has helped improve cardiac arrest survival rates in places all around the world,” the letter reads. “In the decades since, Physio-Control scientists, engineers and researchers were driven to discover — to find new therapies and to create new emergency response devices that needed to be practical, usable and clinically effective.”

Inslee wrote that thanks to these state’s emergency medical responders, health-care providers and companies such as Physio-Control, Washington is a leader in creating effective systems of care for medical emergencies.