The first CAT scan, Linix is introduced, Pandora launches. All on today’s On This Day from TESTHuddle.
1973 – The first CAT Scan
The first Computer Assisted Tomography (CAT) scan is taken in 1973. The first commercially viable CT scanner was invented by Sir Godfrey Hounsfield in Hayes, United Kingdom, at EMI Central Research Laboratories using X-rays. Hounsfield conceived his idea in 1967. The first EMI-Scanner was installed in Atkinson Morley Hospitalin Wimbledon, England. The first scanner took over 5 minutes per scan with 160 parallel readings through 180 angles. The images from these scans took 2.5 hours to be processed. One interesting aspect from this is that it is often claimed that revenues from the sales of The Beatles records in the 1960s helped funding the development of the first CT scanner at EMI although this has been disputed.
The first CT scanner installed in the U.S. was at the Mayo Clinic. Allan McLeod Cormack of Tufts University in Massachusetts independently invented a similar process, and both Hounsfield and Cormack shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
1991 – Linix is introduced
Linus Torvalds introduces Linux to (then called minix) to the world in an online post. In a message to comp.os.minix with the subject line “What would you like to see most in minix?” , Torvalds announces that he was “doing a (free) operating system.” He will receive several ideas in reply and even promises for help test the programme. The operating system’s first version will be released on a Finnish server nic.funet.fi as source code free to all in mid-September. The system got the name “Linux” from the server’s administrator, Ari Lemmke. Linus’ first name for the system was “Freix,” a combination of “freak” and “Unix.
2005 – Pandora launches
The Pandora Internet Radio service is launched. Pandora Internet Radio is a music streaming and automated music recommendation service. The service is operated by Pandora Media, Inc. an currently is only available in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. The service plays musical selections of a certain genre based on the user’s artist selection. The user then provides positive or negative feedback for songs chosen by the service, which are taken into account when Pandora selects future songs.
If you would like to add anything to these events, or know of other significant technology events that happened on this day in history, feel free to comment below.
Images: Wikipedia
