In the mid-1990s, Ajay Bhatt and his colleagues designed USB to replace the jungle of computer ports. A reversible connector would have needed more wires and circuitry, and therefore cost more, so the team chose a one-way plug. Bhatt later admitted he regretted it. It took until USB-C, in 2014, to finally plug things in without looking.
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.