In the 19th century, Charles Babbage designed giant mechanical calculators but never managed to finish them, lacking money and precise enough parts. In 1991, for the bicentenary of his birth, London's Science Museum built his Difference Engine No. 2 following his original plans. The result: some 8,000 parts, around five tonnes, and a machine that works perfectly.
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.