50 years ago, the first tomography device was found thanks to an engineer at the Beatles' record lab

The possibility of precious objects hidden in secret rooms can really fire the imagination. In the mid-1960s, British engineer Godfrey Hounsfield considered whether he could detect hidden areas in the Egyptian pyramids by capturing cosmic rays passing through unseen voids.

He has defended this idea for years, which can be interpreted as "looking inside a box without opening it". Eventually, he figured out how to use high-energy rays to reveal things invisible to the naked eye. He invented a way to see inside the skull and capture an image of the soft brain inside.

Godfrey Hounsfield's childhood did not seem to suggest that he would achieve much. He was not a particularly good student. As a young boy, his teachers described him as "hard-headed". He joined the British Royal Air Force at the start of the Second World War, but was not a very good soldier. He was, however, a magician over electric machines—especially when he presented a newly invented radar that he would install to the jury to help pilots better find their way home on dark, cloudy nights. After the war, Hounsfield followed his commander's advice and earned a degree in engineering. He did his trade at EMI - the company would be better known for selling the Beatles.

Albums started as Electrical and Music Industries with a focus on electronics and electrical engineering.

Hounsfield's natural talents propelled him to lead the team that built the most advanced mainframe computer available in the UK. But in the '60s, EMI wanted to exit the competitive computer market and wasn't sure what to do with this bright, eccentric engineer.

While on a mandatory vacation to think about his future and what he could do for the company, Hounsfield met a doctor who complained of the poor quality of his brain X-rays. Plain X-rays show great detail of bones, but the brain is an amorphous blob of tissue – everything looks like fog on an X-ray. This made Hounsfield rethink his old idea of ​​finding hidden structures without opening the box.

Hounsfield formulated a new way of approaching the problem of imaging what is inside the skull.

First, it would conceptually divide the brain into successive slices—like a loaf of bread. He then planned to irradiate a series of X-rays from each layer, repeating this for each degree of the semicircle. The strength of each beam would be captured on the opposite side of the brain - stronger beams indicating they were passing through less dense material.

Finally, in arguably his most ingenious invention, Hounsfield created an algorithm to reconstruct an image of the brain based on all these layers. Working backwards and using one of the fastest new computers of the era, he was able to calculate the value of every little square of each brain layer.

However, there was a problem: EMI was not included in the medical market and did not want to be involved. The company allowed Hounsfield to work on its product, but with insufficient funding. He was forced to rummage through the scrap bins of research facilities and put together a primitive screening machine that was small enough to stand on a dining table.

Even with successful scans of inanimate objects and later of cow brains, the forces in EMI fell short. Hounsfield needed to find outside funding if it wanted to go ahead with a human scanner.

Hounsfield was a brilliant, intuitive inventor but not an effective communicator. Fortunately, Hounsfield had a sympathetic boss, Bill Ingram, who saw the value in his offer and fought EMI to keep the project afloat.

He knew there was no financial support they could get quickly, but thought the UK Department of Health and Social Security could buy equipment for hospitals. Miraculously, Ingram sold them four scanners before they were even built. So, Hounsfield assembled a team and they competed to create a safe and effective human scanner.

Meanwhile, Hounsfield needed patients to try out his machine. He found a somewhat reluctant neurologist who agreed to help. The team installed a full-size scanner at Atkinson Morley Hospital in London, and on October 1, 1971 they scanned their first patient: a middle-aged woman with signs of a brain tumor.

It wasn't a quick process – it took 30 minutes to scan, a drive across town with magnetic tapes, 2.5 hours to process the data on an EMI mainframe computer and capture the image with a Polaroid camera before returning to the hospital.

And there, a plum-sized cystic mass was detected in the left anterior lobe of the patient. All other methods of imaging the brain were now obsolete.

Millions of CT scans each year

EMI, with no experience in the medical market, suddenly became a monopoly for a machine in high demand. It went into production and was very successful initially selling scanners. But within five years, larger, more experienced companies with more research capacity, such as GE and Siemens it was producing better scanners and increasing sales. EMI is finally out of the medical market - and they decided it might be better to partner with one of the big guys instead of trying to go it alone.

Hounsfield's innovation transformed medicine. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1979 and was knighted by the Queen in 1981. He continued to deal with inventions until his last days in 2004, when he died at the age of 84.

In 1973, American Robert Ledley developed a whole-body scanner that could image other organs, blood vessels and, of course, bones. Modern scanners are faster, provide better resolution, and most importantly, do so with less radiation exposure. There are even mobile browsers now.

By 2020, technicians were performing more than 80 million scans per year in the US. Some doctors argue that the number is excessive, and perhaps a third is unnecessary. While this is true, CT scanning has benefited the health of many patients worldwide, helping to identify tumors and determine if surgery is needed. It is particularly useful for the rapid diagnosis of internal bleeding after accidents in the emergency department.

Remember Hounsfield's idea about the pyramids? In 1970, scientists installed cosmic ray detectors in the lowest chamber of Khafre's Pyramid. They concluded that there was no secret room inside the pyramid. In 2017, another team installed cosmic ray detectors in the Great Pyramid of Giza and concluded that there was no hidden room. In 2017, another team installed cosmic ray detectors in the Great Pyramid of Giza and found a hidden but inaccessible room. It is unlikely to be discovered anytime soon.