In the 1965 Beatles film “Help!” the boys in the band encountered a piece of fictional technology called a Relativity Cadenza which slowed them down to a snail’s pace.
In reality though it seems that The Beatles were at least partly responsible for the invention of an actual piece of technology that is still in use today – The CT or CAT scanner.
In the 1960’s EMI (Their record label owners) were not doing so well in their electronics division. They closed down their whole computer division, leaving Godfrey Hounsfield, one of their research scientists, with little to do.
Then with The Beatles signed to them, EMI found themselves suddenly swimming in money.
They had more money than they knew what to do with, so they told Hounsfield he could research pretty much whatever he liked – the sort of freedom scientists rarely get.
He chose to study using computers to compile X-ray scans of people taken from different angles. Long story short – this led to the development of CAT scanning technology, and Hounsfield won a Nobel prize for it’s invention.
Who would have thought it!
