I've been doing a lot of thinking about Oscilloscopes lately (and definitely hoping to win one). While that is most likely a remote possibility, I came across something quite interesting. I'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail for privacy reasons, but my fiancés grandfather (whom I'm quite close to) is 80 years old. He's been in great health -- former U.S. Navy, 32° mason, 60 years married, former fireman, retired fire chief. In other words, he's tough as nails.
Today he had a heart catheterization procedure. It's nothing short of miraculous that he's still alive -- 50% blockage in one major artery, 99% blockage in the Left Anterior Descending Artery (AKA the "Widowmaker"). Fortunately it was caught *before* he had a heart attack, and will be surgically corrected. I've posted an example below:
Anyhow, he's in good spirits, and being well cared for, but I couldn't help but to take a look at the heart monitor (this is a generic photo of the unit for privacy reasons):
Does that remind you of anything? Perhaps a multi-channel oscilloscope? I did some more digging and it turns out that you can image your heartbeat with an oscilloscope, although it's not recommended because these patient monitoring units have specialized fault protection to keep you from potentially killing yourself... but the principle is largely the same:
In all seriousness, I needed to take this time to vent... to bury my mind in something I enjoy (science / electronics) while all this is going on. Surgery isn't scheduled until Monday, which worries me (I lost my father to sudden cardiac arrest in 2011 and my daughter, whom some of you are familiar with, has been resuscitated twice before because of unforseen complications of her condition.) It's nothing short of a miracle of both spiritual and scientific nature that everything came together to discover this malady in time, and thus give him a fighting chance he most likely wouldn't have had 10 or 15 years ago. It's a reminder that this is why we engineer -- the trickle-down applications of our work may be far reaching in ways we cant imagine -- visualizing a heartbeat as a waveform, for example.... being a derivative of the development of oscilloscopes.
As always, best wishes to all. Kind thoughts and prayers for Carl are greatly appreciated. If you know of any other such unexpected technology crossovers, I'd love to hear about it -- gonna be here a week or more and trying to stay positive, motivated, and forward thinking. There's an early artificial heart downstairs on display -- I'll try to get some pictures of it to share.