This looks at the history of the home pregnancy test and examines its place in our culture. Research that led to a sensitive, accurate pregnancy test was done by scientists in the Reproductive Research Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health.
In the 1950s, the NIH's Dr. Robert Bowman developed a sensitive instrument called the spectrophotofluorometer, or “SPF”, that allowed scientists to use fluorescence as a way to identify and measure tiny amounts of substances in the body. This exhibit explores the instrument and its use in scientific studies ranging from anti-depressant medication to AIDS research and the Human Genome Project.
This exhibition describes the discoveries that led to the heart-lung machine and open heart surgery, the number of experimental replacement valves that were invented and implanted, the role that NIH played in the 1960s and 70s in developing and testing these medical devices, and the public safety and regulatory responsibilities that were entrusted to the FDA.
The quest to free us from a dependence upon certain flowers by developing a synthetic source for morphine and codeine and the development of new painkillers is described. This work at NIDDK resulted in the NIH Total Opiate Synthesis method.
The Real Time Picture Processor (RTPP) was one of the first special-purpose hardware computers developed for grayscale image processing and was designed to aid in biological image analysis.
This looks at the history of the home pregnancy test and examines its place in our culture. Research that led to a sensitive, accurate pregnancy test was done by scientists in the Reproductive Research Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health.
