We know when Alexander Graham Bell successfully perfected his sound over distance device, the telephone, it was Watson who came quickly.
When the Wright brothers flew their wired-together motorized kite, it was Wilbur at the controls and Orville taking tickets and handing out the peanuts.
Likewise, the first words uttered in defining moments of man's existence have come down to us through the ages.
We all know the couplet spoken as Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the lunar surface. "That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind."
We have eyewitnesses to the words Samuel Morse clicked out in the first coded telegraph message from the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington to the B&O train depot in Baltimore. "What hath God wrought?"
The last words of the great and humble have also survived the ravages of time to enlighten or, in a dark way, humor us.
I am about to — or I am going to — die: either expression is correct. — Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian, died 1702
They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist. … — General John Sedgwick, Union Commander, died 1864. Killed by Confederate sniper at Gettysburg
Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something. — Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary, died 1923
Sadly, history failed to identify the creator of guns. It is equally remiss in noting the name of the first person shot and killed by the new discovery.
Historians have forgotten the stirring words spoken by the shooter who pulled the trigger for the first time, and worst of all, there is no hint of the last words of the initial great martyr.
However, in reverent retrospect, there are some possibilities that we could imagine from the common events of our day in regards to guns and shooting.
Who was the first shooter?
The Chinese are credited with the primary use of gunpowder, so the name of the inventor could have been Mandarin.
But there are also reports from India and from the Arab world. Mighty slave armies of various Muslim nations, the Mamluks, were said to have rudimentary pistols as part of their armamentarium, along with lances and sabers.
In 1260, the Mongols were the moving targets of Egyptians in the Battle of Ain Jalute. The famous last words may have been something like: "Those Mamluks, they couldn't hit a camel at this dist. …"
Still, one has to wonder if the original words from the shooter to the breathing bull's-eye were "Oops, I'm sorry," or "Take that, you brute" or "Oh, wow, this is so cool!"
Maybe it was in the context of an experiment.
"Subject No. 1, when struck by the speeding projectile, uttered an indescribable sound and fell over without a pulse or respiration. Conclusion: Guns kill."
There was the first time that a gun was used in a robbery, in a hostage situation, a murder-suicide, an accidental killing of a bystander or an innocent child.
There is no written message in Arabic, Chinese or any one of the hundred Indian tongues about when someone possessed with a devil went on a shooting rampage firing indiscriminately into a crowd of people.
Without multicartridge magazines and automatic firing capabilities, the rampages would probably have been shorter and less homicidal than today's.
Assassinations with guns have killed more than the victims. Everyone knows about the Archduke of Austria being shot by a Bosnian national, which triggered the butcher of millions in the trenches of Europe in World War I.
Americans should not forget the single bullet that crashed into the skull of Abraham Lincoln that altered the course of our history.
So we don't know the designer of the gun, its primary victim and the delivered speech.
Maybe it could be like John Lennon, "I'm shot." Or, appropriately, like Samuel Morse "What hath God wrought?"
Joseph Cramer, M.D., is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, practicing pediatrician for more than 25 years and an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah. He can be reached at jgcramermd@yahoo.com