{"id":489100,"date":"2010-03-30T10:30:43","date_gmt":"2010-03-30T14:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gereports.com\/?p=5550"},"modified":"2010-03-30T10:30:43","modified_gmt":"2010-03-30T14:30:43","slug":"leaps-in-the-lab-from-reagan%e2%80%99s-tv-to-digital-x-rays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/489100","title":{"rendered":"Leaps in the lab: From Reagan\u2019s TV to digital x-rays"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span>As part of GE\u2019s sponsorship of the Ronald Reagan Centennial Celebration<\/a> — which is a two-year-long commemoration of President Reagan\u2019s 100th birthday on February 6, 2011 — we\u2019ll be taking an ongoing look at Reagan\u2019s GE years through the lens of the employees he met and the technologies they made.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1954 when Ronald Reagan began his eight-year tenure as spokesman for GE, the television was already taking its place as the focus of the new home entertainment center. Color television was still a luxury, the phonograph had morphed into the \u201chigh fidelity\u201d stereo and while slightly diminished, the faithful radio still had its place in the living room. While rudimentary television technology seemed wondrous to its early audience, few scientists or engineers could have predicted that it would serve as a forerunner not only for future entertainment applications, but also for cutting edge medical care.<\/p>\n

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<\/GEREPORTS_WEBONLY>Home sweet home: <\/span>Take a tour of the Reagan’s home and all of its products that help them “live better electrically,” as the old slogan goes, in the General Electric Theater<\/em> clip above.<\/span>
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\nOn its surface, GE\u2019s digital x-ray radiography detectors seem to have little in common with the General Electric television sets that Reagan promoted during the Eisenhower era. But as Tom Feist, the general manager of global x-ray detectors at GE Healthcare, observes, there\u2019s an evolutionary link between the two technologies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe basic storyline is that the TV\u2019s were big and bulky and that even then, there was a vision of a television that would take up less space,\u201d Tom says. \u201cAt the time, no one had any idea of how to get rid of cathode ray tubes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Decades before flat screen TV\u2019s became popular, GE engineers were trying to figure out how to create a less cumbersome television. In the late 1970\u2019s and early 1980\u2019s, the company began making inroads into flat panel displays and LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) technology and created its first color LCD displays for aircraft cockpit instrument panels. GE began developing the same flat screen displays for televisions, but got out of the television manufacturing industry in 1986.<\/p>\n

It was from the LCD technology used in flat panel displays that Jack Kingsley, a GE researcher, developed the idea for the digital x-ray imaging device in the late 1980\u2019s. Kingsley and his team discovered that they could use LCD technology to absorb X-rays, as opposed to giving off light. GE commercially introduced radiographic imaging in 1999 and in 2000, began marketing a digital system mammography.<\/p>\n

One of digital\u2019s biggest advantages is its ability to facilitate real time imaging. If a physician in Sydney needs to consult with a specialist in London, it can be done almost instantaneously. Eliminating analog film is also environmentally sound, saving on the need for fixer and developer chemicals. Tom says that today, digital x-ray imaging accounts for more than half of the x-rays used in hospital in the United States and Western Europe. He believes that ultimately it will completely replace standard film-based machines.<\/p>\n

* Read \u201cCoast to coast with 250,000 employees: Reagan at GE<\/a>\u201d on GE Reports
\n* Read \u201cThe Reagan centennial: A legacy of progress<\/a>\u201d on GE Reports
\n* Read Reagan essays on our website by Thomas W. Evans<\/a>, Peggy Noonan<\/a>, Andrea Mitchell<\/a>, Tom Brokaw<\/a>, and Rudy Giuliani<\/a>
\n* See more of Reagan\u2019s General Electric Theater<\/em> spots by clicking the videos in this slideshow<\/a>
\n* Read GE\u2019s Centennial announcement<\/a>
\n* Learn more about the centennial at www.reagancentennial.com<\/a>
\n* Watch a rebroadcast of Jeff Immelt’s speech at the Reagan Library<\/a>
\n* Read \u201cPicturing the benefits of digital x-rays<\/a>\u201d on GE Reports<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of GE\u2019s sponsorship of the Ronald Reagan Centennial Celebration — which is a two-year-long commemoration of President Reagan\u2019s 100th birthday on February 6, 2011 — we\u2019ll be taking an ongoing look at Reagan\u2019s GE years through the lens of the employees he met and the technologies they made. In 1954 when Ronald Reagan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4069,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-489100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}