In 2003, Bill Burr wrote guidance for the US National Institute of Standards and Technology that became universal: mix capitals, numbers and symbols, and change your password every 90 days. The result was “P@ssw0rd1!”-style passwords that are hard to remember yet easy for computers to guess. In 2017, NIST revised its advice, and Burr publicly said he regretted much of what he had recommended.
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.