In August 1888, without telling her husband Carl, Bertha Benz took his automobile and her two sons to visit her mother, about a hundred kilometres away. Along the way, she bought fuel at a pharmacy, cleared a blocked line with a hatpin and insulated a wire with her garter. The journey proved the car was practical for real use and brought the invention wide publicity.
In 1843, inventor Alexander Bain patented a way to send images over telegraph wires using synchronized pendulums. By the 1860s, a commercial fax service was already linking cities. The telephone wasn't patented until 1876, more than three decades after that first fax patent. The fax is really a child of the telegraph age.
On 8 October 1958, in Stockholm, 43-year-old Arne Larsson received the very first implanted pacemaker. The device, designed by engineer Rune Elmqvist and implanted by surgeon Åke Senning, worked for only a few hours and had to be replaced. Larsson went on to receive more than twenty pacemakers in his lifetime. He died in 2001 aged 86, outliving both the engineer and the surgeon.