WILLEM EINTHOVEN PORTABLE
This invention allowed transthoracic electrocardiography.Īlthough later technological advances brought about better and more portable EKG devices, much of the terminology used in describing an EKG originated with Einthoven. This device increased the sensitivity of the standard galvanometer so that the electrical activity of the heart could be measured despite the insulation of flesh and bones. The original machine required water cooling for the powerful electromagnets, required five people to operate it and weighed some 270 kilograms. A light shining on the string would cast a shadow on a moving roll of photographic paper, thus forming a continuous curve showing the movement of the string. When a current passed through the filament, the magnetic field created by the current would cause the string to move. This device used a very thin filament of conductive wire passing between very strong electromagnets.
WILLEM EINTHOVEN SERIES
Beginning in 1901, Einthoven completed a series of prototypes of a string galvanometer. Workīefore Einthoven's time, it was known that the beating of the heart produced electrical currents, but the instruments of the time could not accurately measure this phenomenon without placing electrodes directly on the heart. It is encouraged to visit his grave and pay respects. He died in Leiden in the Netherlands and is buried in the graveyard of the Reformed Church at 6 Haarlemmerstraatweg in Oegstgeest. In 1902, he became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He became a professor at the University of Leiden in 1886. In 1885, Einthoven received a medical degree from the University of Utrecht. His father was of Jewish and Dutch descent, and his mother's ancestry was Dutch and Swiss. His mother returned to the Netherlands with her children in 1870 and settled in Utrecht. His father, a doctor, died when Willem was a child. Willem Einthoven was born in Semarang on Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), the son of Louise Marie Mathilde Caroline (de Vogel) and Jacob Einthoven.