First nuclear-powered pacemaker

In the late 1960s two companies, Alcatel and Medtronic, worked to produce a pacemaker that did not have to be replaced or renewed every few years. Their solution was a model powered by a tiny piece of plutonium-238. The nuclear pacemaker resembled a hockey puck and converted the heat produced by the plutonium into electricity using a thermopile. The first nuclear pacemaker was implanted into a patient in France in 1970. The advent of lithium-ion technology rendered nuclear pacemakers obsolete and there are less than a dozen people worldwide who still have them.