GEC Medical was a unit of the General Electric Company that was headquartered in what was known as East Lane Industrial Estate in

North Wembley North Wembley is a district in North West London, England. It is located in the London Borough of Brent and is mostly made up of the 1930s Sudbury Court Estate. North Wembley forms the north-western part of the district of that is its namesake. ...

, behind the

Hirst Research Centre The Hirst Research Centre, also known as the GEC Hirst Research Centre or GEC Research Laboratories, was established in 1919 at Wembley, Middlesex, by the General Electric Company. History Formally opened in 1923, the site at East Lane, Wembley ...

which fronted East Lane. The East Lane Industrial Estate boasted a triangular illuminated rotating sign of the same design as the one at Scotland Yard, but translucent and coloured bright yellow. The company was known as Watson & Son (X-ray) Ltd. until the merger in the late 1960s with A. E. Dean and Co. of Croydon. Watson and Sons had originally manufactured

microscopes A microscope () is a laboratory instrument used to examine objects that are too small to be seen by the naked eye. Microscopy is the science of investigating small objects and structures using a microscope. Microscopic means being invisib ...

and other optical instruments, but in the late 19th century had seen the opportunity of making

X-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...

equipment. They became part of GEC in the very early part of the 20th century. The main business of the merged GEC Medical was the manufacture of X-ray equipment, including X-ray tubes which were made under licence from a US company called

Machlett Laboratories Machlett Laboratories was a Northeastern United States-based company that manufactured X-ray and high-power vacuum tubes. Machlett was a large producer of the tubes and developed accessories to be used with them as well. For its contributions to ...

. Other products were the high voltage supplies needed for X-ray tubes, the tables for positioning patients and many other accessories. It also employed a fairly large number of people supplying spare parts and servicing the pieces of equipment that were sold by the company. In the late 1980s the company introduced the concept of using a higher than mains frequency in an X-ray power supply. One of the last products made by the company before it closed was a mammography unit. Until closure GEC Medical had around 40% of the UK market for medical imaging devices.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

GEC also funded some of the development of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) using resistive magnet technology. At the same time,

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British Transnational corporation, transnational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in March 1 ...

Medical who had introduced the CT Scanner some time before using the principle of

Godfrey Hounsfield Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield (28 August 1919 – 12 August 2004) was an English electrical engineer who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Allan MacLeod Cormack for his part in developing the diagnostic technique of X ...

, for which he won the 1979

Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, according ...

, were developing MRI using cryogenic magnets - which gave a higher field strength. At the time the maximum field strength with a resistive magnet was about 0.1T. With a cryogenic magnet, 1.0 T was easily achieved. EMI Medical went bankrupt at around this time so their interests in MRI were bought by GEC. This was a major impetus for GEC's acquisition of Picker Corporation in 1981. The merged company as Picker International had the first MRI scanner approved by the

U.S. Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a federal agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the control and supervision of food ...

(FDA) on the US market. However business in the following decade did not suit them, and despite winning an order for air-droppable X-ray units for the

US Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

, they closed the factory at Wembley in 1990, along with other sites in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

and

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Gec Medical Medical imaging Medical technology companies of the United Kingdom Defunct manufacturing companies of the United Kingdom General Electric Company