Irvine Company’s Monitor Close to Glenn’s Heart

As NASA tracks veteran astronaut John Glenn, seeking clues to how space travel affects the elderly, it will use a device by Irvine-based Del Mar Avionics to record his heartbeat.

Glenn will wear the device for a 24-hour period, company officials said Thursday. The “DigiCorder Holter” monitor, the size of a portable telephone, will track the 77-year-old astronaut’s heartbeat and store data digitally in its memory.

After the flight, NASA will analyze the data, looking for cardiac irregularities. Del Mar made its first Holter device in 1963--a year after Glenn made his first historic spaceflight.

The original Holter device, designed by the late Montana physicist Norman J. Holter, recorded cardiac rhythms using reel-to-reel tape. The version today is used in thousands of hospitals around the world.

NASA paid about $60,000 for about eight recorders and one analyzer three years ago--not that much for Del Mar, which has annual revenue of about $35 million, the company said.

The company previously supplied another device for a space mission. In the early 1980s, astronaut William Thornton, one of the company’s former employees, wore a Del Mar device into space to measure his blood pressure, officials said.

“John Glenn using it is very important to us, because he is a national hero,” said Bruce Del Mar, the company’s owner and president. “We are very proud of that.”