Hello and thank you for downloading the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Kurt Brookes and today I'm taking you back to the first time a robot assisted medical

surgery.

This was on the 12th of March 1985 in Vancouver Canada and Jeff Orkinleck was part of the

lead team on the project.

My first job was as a biomedical engineer at Vancouver General Hospital where I met

an amazing fellow named Dr. Jim McEwen who led me into the world of medical device development

where I still reside today.

It might seem surprising now but this key moment in medical history had a very low key beginning.

For the most part there was little media interest.

Probably the best coverage of it was from National Geographic.

They were doing an educational video on robotics and came up and filmed the device in use

and surgery.

You can just about see a patient laid on their back on a bed that's covered with plastic

sheeting.

You can see the leg and then the surgeon gives an instruction.

At this point the patient's right leg moves bending at the knee with the foot now closer

to the ground.

The movement is slow and steady.

After the filming they took us aside and said we've been traveling all over the world

looking at various robotic devices and quite frankly yours is the only one that really

seems to work properly so I was quite gratifying to hear that.

...