BIONIC

On August 26, 1994 the BBC had the news that “a man gets 'bionic' heart.”

"A man has been given the world's first battery-operated heart in a pioneering operation in Britain. The patient, an unnamed 62-year-old from the south of England, is now in a stable condition at the world-famous Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire."

 

Arthur Cornhill, 62, became the world's first patient to go home with a mechanical heart - a plastic and metal device in his abdomen. It was fitted at Papworth Hospital, Cambridgeshire, in August 1994. The recipient of the heart pump was later named as Arthur Cornhill.

He died from kidney failure nine months after the operation.

At the time of Mr Cornhill's death, the LVAD (left ventricular assist device) had been implanted into two other British men, one of whom died shortly afterwards.

In 2000 progress in LVAD (left ventricular assist device) technology allowed doctors in Oxford, England, to fit the first pump designed to be a permanent fixture inside a patient's failing heart. The patient, Peter Houghton, was on the brink of death before the operation that allowed to him to lead a fit and active life.

Bionics

Bionics is the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology.

The word bionic was coined by Jack E. Steele in 1958, possibly originating from the technical term bion (pronounced BEE-on; from Ancient Greek: βίος), meaning 'unit of life' and the suffix -ic, meaning 'like' or 'in the manner of', hence 'like life'. Some dictionaries, however, explain the word as being formed as a portmanteau from biology and electronics. It was popularized by the 1970s U.S. television series The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, both based upon the novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin, which was itself influenced by Steele's work. All feature humans given superhuman powers by electromagnetically implants.

The transfer of technology between lifeforms and manufactures is, according to proponents of bionic technology, desirable because evolutionary pressure typically forces living organisms, including fauna and flora, to become highly optimized and efficient. A classic example is the development of dirt- and water-repellent paint (coating) from the observation that the surface of the lotus flower plant is practically unstick for anything (the lotus effect).

Examples of bionics in engineering include the hulls of boats imitating the thick skin of dolphins; sonar, radar, and medical ultrasound imaging imitating animal echolocation.

In the field of computer science, the study of bionics has produced artificial neurons, artificial neural networks, and swarm intelligence. Evolutionary computation was also motivated by bionics ideas but it took the idea further by simulating evolution in silicon and producing well-optimized solutions that had never appeared in nature.