Bionic Eye On this date in 1995, a blind teenager received a "bionic eye" at a Washington hospital. The word bionic refers to the use of engineered materials to stimulate, improve or replace bodily functions. Work on restoring vision artificially began in the 1960s when Giles Brindley of London's Medical Research Council lined a cap with electrodes and placed it on a blind patient's head. Pulses transmitted through the cap caused the patient to "see" white light. Other developments included experiments by William Dobelle in New York City, who used camera signals sent to the brain to help a man distinguish shapes and alphabet letters. And, in 2000, a blind woman had her sight partially restored when a bionic system sent signals to her optic nerve.
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