The First CT Scan Lets Doctors See Inside a Living Body
- Date
- 1971
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- Europe (United Kingdom)
- Era
- Contemporary
- Significance
Medical imaging was revolutionised on 1 October 1971 when engineer Godfrey Hounsfield and radiologist James Ambrose performed the first computed-tomography scan on a patient at Atkinson Morley Hospital in London, imaging a woman's brain tumour.
Developed by Hounsfield at EMI—the company enriched by Beatles record sales—the CT scanner combined X-rays taken from many angles with computer processing to reconstruct cross-sectional "slices" of the body, revealing soft tissue that conventional X-rays could not. The first scan took thirty minutes and required hours of mainframe computation to produce a single blurry image, yet it let physicians peer inside a living skull without surgery for the first time. Publicly unveiled in 1972, CT scanning spread rapidly through hospitals worldwide, transforming diagnosis of tumours, strokes and injuries and saving countless lives. Hounsfield shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the breakthrough. The technology inaugurated the age of digital cross-sectional imaging, paving the way for MRI and modern diagnostic medicine and fundamentally changing how disease is detected and treated.
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Empires active in 1971
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
- Dutch Empire1581 CE – 1975 CE
Related science, technology & invention events
- Louise Brown, the First IVF Baby, Is Born1978
- Intel Releases the 4004, the First Commercial Microprocessor1971
- Apollo 11 Moon landing20 July 1969 (mission 16–24 July 1969)
- Green Revolution Transforms South Asian Agriculturec. 1966 (peak adoption mid-1960s onward)
- The Apple II Launches the Personal Computer Era1977
- Global eradication of smallpox declared8 May 1980 (last natural case 1977)
Further reading
The wider story
A Little History of Science
Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.
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