INVENTION:

Electrocardiograph

It is a very important medical invention because, it allows to the physicians to know the normal physiology of the heart and the impact of different diseases on the structure and function of the heart.

What is it?

Electrocardiograph is an oscilloscope that has the ability to sense and amplify the electrical activity of the heart through electrodes placed on the 4 limbs and precordial in 6 positions, and by means of a needle passing the record to a role of special features in realtime. The record of this activity is the electrocardiogram (ECG).

What is it for?


This is a device that allows to observe the electrical activity of the heart.

This unit was created in 1901 by Willem Einthoven.

Einthoven was born in Semarang on Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). In 1885, Einthoven received a medical degree from the University of Utrecht . He became a professor at the University of Leiden in 1886. In 1924 the Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize of Medicine and Physiology for their invention.


· WE was Dutch doctor and physiologist. Professor of physiology and histology at the University of Leiden, Netherlands



How did he do this?

Willem Einthoven placed two sensors on the skin of a man that were connected to the ends of a silver wire which passed between the two poles of a magnet. The wire was moving to the rhythm of heartbeat. This is called the string galvanometer

In 1901 Einthoven project a narrow beam of light through the holes at the poles of the magnet, across the silver wire moving. These movements were recorded in waves. 

He called P waves, QRS and T, on a parchment moving photographic paper. And with that he also invented the electrocardiogram. It´s the paper record of the electrical activity of the heart.

The operation of the electrocardiograph, as clinical diagnostic equipment , is based on the installation of a number of electrodes on the surface of the patient's skin at the level of the thoracic region , and in this way to record the electrical activity of the heart at different angles.
Current electrocardiographs have computerized systems to measure events. paper electrocardiography: It is a printed thermal paper with graph grid