His name was Barney Clark and he was a 61 year old dentist. It was fitted at the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City.

He had to spend the last four months of his life in a hospital bed in considerable pain and remained on a life support system which pumped compressed air into his body.

The heart (a Jarvik-7) was fitted by a team led by Dr. William C. DeVries on December 2, 1982.

Artificial heart developments continues and in the 1990's the Jarvik-7 was temporarily fitted to around 150 patients until a real heart could be transplanted. More than half of those fitted with artificial hearts lived until a transplant heart could be found.

Today research is going into developing a smaller heart pump.