A device that can 'mimic the action of the front end circuitry of the retina' and send images directly to the brain is being pioneered by a Weill Medical College of Cornell University team.
View this excellent TEDMED talk by neuroscientist Sheila Nirenberg for more details.
(TEDMED talk)
Star Trek fans have been waiting for Geordi la Forge's VISOR (or something like it) to send images directly to the brains of people who have lost their sight.
(Geordi la Forge)
Update 27-Feb-2017: Take a look at the vision strip from Orphans of the Void (1952) by Orville Shaara.
End update.
From Daily Mail; thanks to Moira for sending the tip and the reference (thereby rousing me from my sickbed!).
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 12/28/2011)
MIT Computerized Bionic Leg Is Part Of The User
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain, through the mediation of the electronic brain in the leg.' - Charles Recour, 1949.
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't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
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'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'