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Hello and thank you for downloading witness history from the BBC World Service with me Simon Watts.

Today I'm bringing you the story behind a device that saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of heart attack victims.

Portable defibrillators are those boxes you see in offices and public places like shopping malls. They contain equipment to give patients

in emergency electric shock and they were invented in the 1960s by a

Northern Irish hospital doctor called Frank Pantridge. I've been finding out more about

him using the BBC Archives.

They say that the safest place in the world to have a heart attack is Belfast.

When research showed that more than half the people who had coronaries died before they could get to hospital,

doctors here decided to take the hospital to the patient.

In 1966, the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast launched a revolution in emergency care.

Now if you're struck down by a coronary in Belfast,

you can have the best heart specialist with the newest equipment at your side within minutes.

The specialists were junior doctors who arrived in so-called heart ambulances.

These carried new devices called portable defibrillators, which could help save patients in cardiac arrest.

They were invented by coronary consultant Frank Pantridge.

The first thing was Friday Diibrillator that would in fact

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