The invention of the CT scanner

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

In 1971, the CT scanner was invented by South African physicist Allan Cormack and British engineer Sir Godfrey Hounsfield.

It was a ground-breaking moment in modern medicine and they're now in almost every hospital around the world.

Rachel Naylor speaks to Allan's son, Robert Cormack.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.

(Photo: A patient receiving a CT scan in 1977. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Annie Matmanis and my name isn't it Grimshaw. How long have we known each other babe?
0:05.0	Probably 20 years now and in that time we've always worked in and around music right?
0:10.0	We have. So it kind of makes sense that we do a podcast better. It sounds
0:13.9	like he's been 20 years in the making. It's not a avatar for podcasts basically, but it is good.
0:18.6	So we put the world to rights with Hello you're listening to the BBC World Service and now the Witness History
0:37.4	podcast with me Rachel Naylor. I'm taking you back to when the CT scanner
0:41.4	was invented by the British engineer Sir Godfrey
0:44.0	Hounsfield and the South African physicist Alan Cormac. It was a groundbreaking moment in
0:48.9	modern medicine and they're now in almost every hospital around the world.
0:52.8	I've been speaking to Alan's son, Robert.
0:55.2	It's the 1950s and we're in Cape Town in South Africa.
1:00.6	Alan is working at Crewehte Skuwa Hospital.
1:03.8	The local hospital needed someone to receive radioactive material that was being shipped out from
1:07.9	London.
1:08.9	Radioactive material was shipped out on the tip of the wing of an airplane to keep it away from the passengers and crew.
1:15.5	So he got involved with the radiation therapy department and one of the physicians there
1:21.8	asked him how much time he needed to leave the radiation on to give the treatment and that got him thinking about the problem of in order to know the answer to that you need to know where the tumor is and he started thinking about how to determine
1:33.2	where the tumor location was within the patient.
1:35.5	Alan had the idea of using x-rays from multiple angles which would then be processed by a
1:40.4	computer to produce cross-sectional images or slices of the body and he
1:45.6	succeeded. In 1963 and 64 Alan published two papers on his findings in the Journal of Applied
1:52.1	Physics.
	...

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