The famous ventriloquist, and voice of Tigger on Winnie the Pooh, Paul Winchell is also known for his work on the artificial heart.
He became friends with surgeon Dr. Henry Heimlich, who invented the Heimlich maneuver, after meeting him at a casting party in New York. After observing Heimlich conducting surgery, Winchell got the idea that an artificial heart could keep blood circulating during open heart surgery. With Heimlich’s encouragement, Winchell made a prototype and filed a patent application in 1961 which issued as U.S. Pat. 3,097,366 in 1963.
“Odd as it may seem, the heart wasn’t that different from building a dummy; the valves and chambers were not unlike the moving eyes and closing mouth of a puppet.”
Paul Winchel
Dr. Robert Jarvik and Willem Kolff of the University of Utah were the first to develop a working artificial heart, the Jarvik-7. When Winchell’s patent was cited as prior art to their patent application, the University reached out to Winchell asking him to donate his patent, which he did. Winchell maintained that his patent was used to develop the Jarvik-7―a claim that Jarvik hotly disputes.