Physicians and many laypeople are familiar with the 1- and 5-min Apgar scoring system for screening the health of newborns, a system named after anesthesiologist Virginia Apgar, M.D. Her original screening system was simplified in 1962 to the acronym APGAR for the neonate’s Appearance (color), Pulse (heart rate), Grimace (reflex irritability), Activity (muscle tone), and Respiration. At a meeting in New York in 1968, an anesthesiologist named Miguel Angel Colón-Morales, M.D., displayed his “Apgar Score Timing Unit” as a single timer mounted on a clipboard. In June 1969, he filed a U.S. patent application for that invention as a “Device for monitoring physiological phenomenon.” One year later, he was granted U.S. Patent No. 3517636. A later version of his invention featured not one, but two timers (right), and was dubbed (left) the “New Apgar Score Timing Unit.” (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.)