Rebuilt Chinese printing for the computer age from a hospital bed, half blind with illness
Working through years of chronic illness that left him bedridden for long stretches, he solved the problem of compressing thousands of Chinese…
Built the first artificial kidney from sausage skins and orange juice tins in occupied Holland
A young doctor who watched a patient die slowly of kidney failure, he built a dialysis machine from scavenged parts during the German occupation. His…
Forced out of school by famine at 14, he built a windmill from scrap using a library book and lit his village
When drought left his family unable to pay school fees, he taught himself from a physics textbook in a small village library and built a wind turbine…
Picked the wrong resistor from a box, heard the circuit tick like a heart, and built the implantable pacemaker
A wartime radio operator who trained on the GI Bill, he made the mistake in 1956 that led to the first practical implantable pacemaker, then gave up…
