According to Canon, in 1977 engineer Ichiro Endo accidentally rested a hot soldering iron on a syringe filled with ink. Moments later, ink spurted from the needle: the heat had created a vapour bubble that pushed the liquid out. This principle, a tiny heater that fires out a droplet, now runs millions of printers. HP developed it at almost the same time.
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.