Defibrillator: A Boy and Two SpoonsA surgeon's crude experiment became a medical breakthrough.

From the show

The Secret Life of Objects

The first successful defibrillation was a desperate act of improvisation during a teenager's open-heart surgery. In 1947, when a 14-year-old boy went into cardiac arrest, surgeon Claude Beck refused to give up. Recalling his animal research, he used two silver tablespoons as makeshift paddles to shock the boy's heart. After a failed first attempt and continued heart massage, a second shock restarted the boy's heart, marking a pivotal moment in medicine.