Loupe operating glasses

Dr. Denton Cooley performed the first successful heart transplant in the United States in 1968 and the world's first artificial heart implantation in 1969. He wore these glasses during his many surgeries. With a slight tilt of his head, they allowed Dr. Cooley to see through the spectacle lens or the magnifying loupes, giving him the option to work with or without magnification as needed.

Born and raised in Houston, Denton Cooley entered medical school at the UT Medical Branch at Galveston. He later transferred to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where he graduated in 1944 at the top of his class.

Cooley returned to Houston in 1951, beginning a six-decade career in which he became the leading expert on congenital heart defects in children, pioneered use of the heart-lung machine that made open-heart surgery possible, co-developed a technique for repairing torn aortic aneurysms, developed the techniques of "bloodless" heart surgery, and was one of the first and most successful proponents of the coronary artery bypass graft for treating blocked blood vessels.

Beginning in the 1960s and through the 1990s, Cooley performed an estimated 65,000 open-heart surgeries at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, which he founded in 1962. He performed his final operation in 2007 — when he was 87 years old.