As early as the 1840s, several inventors had made filaments glow using electricity. In 1878 and 1879, Britain's Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison independently developed carbon-filament bulbs. Edison's decisive contribution was a long-lasting lamp and, above all, a whole system: power stations, cables and meters. The two rivals even ended up joining forces in Britain.
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.