In 1955, Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was declared safe and effective, triggering mass vaccination campaigns. Asked by a journalist who owned the patent, Salk said it belonged to the people, adding: “Could you patent the sun?” To be fair, lawyers had already judged the vaccine hard to patent anyway. Polio cases have since fallen by more than 99% worldwide.
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.