Paul Winchell

Paul Winchell (December 21, 1922 - June 24, 2005) was an American ventriloquist, comedian, actor and inventor whose entertainment career, including hosting his own television shows and voicing characters such as Tigger and Dick Dastardly, ran alongside a lasting interest in medicine: he studied as a pre-med student at Columbia University and later graduated from an acupuncture college in 1974. His most significant medical contribution was one of the first patents for a mechanical artificial heart implantable in the chest cavity, granted in 1963, developed with Dr. Henry Heimlich; Heimlich later said the basic principle of Winchell's heart and Robert Jarvik's later Jarvik-7 was exactly the same, though Jarvik denied using Winchell's design. Winchell eventually donated his heart patents to the University of Utah School of Medicine and held more than 30 patents in total, including several other medical devices.