13 WTHR - Indianapolis News |Purdue engineer earns top honors

Purdue engineer earns top honors

Tom Walker/Eyewitness News

Washington - A Purdue engineer has proven that inventiveness has no age limit. On Friday he was at the White House to collect one of the highest honors in his field.

For 50 years, Leslie Geddes has been coming up with ideas and new ways to make things, most of them in the field of medicine. His inventions ranging from miniature defibrillators to extremely small blood pressure monitors. He was surprised and pleased when he learned he had been selected for the National Medal of Technology, one of the highest honors the country can offer.

At 86, Geddes has more than 30 patents to his credit and has made millions for Purdue. He's also learned a lot about what could make all of us more inventive.

"We're so busy, if we don't do this, something bad will happen. If we don't do that something bad will happen. So we're always busy getting thing away from us. But there should be times when you can sit down and think about something and what I do is just that," Geddes said.

This award is certainly a high point, but it by no means marks the end of Geddes' career. The big ideas keep coming, and he plans to pursue them. Even at 86, Leslie Geddes is at his lab working by 5:00 am.