1876: Alexander Graham Bell makes the first telephone call in his Boston laboratory, summoning his assistant from the next room. The Scottish-born Bell had a lifelong interest in the nature of sound. He was born into a family of speech instructors, and his mother and his wife both had hearing impairments. While ostensibly working in 1875 on a device to send multiple telegraph signals over the same wire by using harmonics , he heard a twang. That led him to investigate whether his electrical apparatus could be used to transmit the sound of a human voice. Bell's journal, now at the Library of Congress , contains the following entry for March 10, 1876: I then shouted into M [the mouthpiece] the following sentence: "Mr. Watson, come here -- I want to see you." To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said. I asked him to repeat the words. He answered, "You said 'Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you.'" We then changed places and I listened at S [the speaker] while Mr. Watson read a few passages from a book into the mouthpiece M. It was certainly the case that articulate sounds proceeded from S. The effect was loud but indistinct and muffled. Watson's journal, however, says the famous quote was: "Mr. Watson come here I want you." That disagreement, though, is trifling compared to the long controversy over whether Bell truly invented the telephone. Another inventor, Elisha Gray, was working on a similar device, and recent books claim that Bell not only stole Gray's ideas, but may even have bribed a patent inspector to let him sneak a look at Gray's filing. After years of litigation, Bell's patents eventually withstood challenges from Gray and others -- perhaps by right, perhaps by virtue of bigger backers and better barristers. In that respect, the controversy recalls the patent battle over the telegraph and foreshadows later squabbles over the automobile , the airplane, the spreadsheet, online shopping carts, web-auction software, and the look and feel of operating systems. One thing we know for sure: Mr. Watson was at work that day in Bell's lab. The telephone call did not interrupt his dinner with a special offer for home repairs or timeshare vacations in Florida.
Early Office Museum
'Mr. Watson, Come Here ... '
appendix operation through mouth
Surgeons remove man's appendix through his mouth in world first operation
A sore throat is not exactly the most obvious side effect of having your appendix out but for Jeff Scholtz it was proof he had secured his place in medical history.
Mr Scholtz is one of the first patients in the world to have his appendix removed through his mouth.
Crucially, the surgery caused no scar and, barring the sore throat, had no side effects.
It left Mr Scholtz, a former U.S. marine, feeling so chipper he was back at work two days later and, 24 hours after that, was fit enough to do sit-ups.
The operation, which is a major advance in the quest for scar-free surgery, was performed by doctors in San Diego, California, who used a flexible tube to thread miniature surgical instruments down the 42-year-old' s throat to his stomach.
A tiny incision was then made in the stomach wall to get at the appendix - a small worm-like pouch attached to the large bowel.
The inflamed appendix was cut away, bagged and pulled back into the stomach - and out of the mouth.
Mr Scholtz, a clothing manufacturer, said: "They told me to take it easy but I felt great.
"I was eating pizza and doing situps three days later.
"You'd think the way it was done, going through the stomach wall, I'd have had all kind of stomach pains, but there was nothing.
"My father had the conventional appendix removal. I didn't want the standard issue scar."
Patients given conventional appendectomies through the abdomen can spend up to a week in hospital and may have to avoid playing sport for up to six weeks.
Professor Horgan, who leads the hospital's Centre for the Future of Surgery, told Sky News: "Imagine a day when surgery requires no incisions or just one tiny incision that is only millimetres in length.
"Scarless, painless techniques are what the centre is setting the stage for right at this minute. Patients deserve it."
He added: "My dad was a surgeon and, in his time, the larger the incisionthe better the surgeon. Today, we are moving away from that and trying to minimise the trauma."
Dr Hiten Patel, an expert in non-invasive surgery at University College Hospital, London, said scar-free surgery would have many benefits.
"There is a faster recovery time, there is less pain," he said. "In the space of ten years, we have moved from big scar surgery to keyhole surgery. This is the way forward."
The first similar scar-free operations in Britain are thought to be three to four years away.
