50 years of scientific instruments on display next week at anniversary Open House

One of the early treadmills built in the 1950s by the Scientific Instrument Division.

The UW’s Scientific Instruments Division will celebrate 50 years of achievement with an anniversary celebration and open house from 3 to 5 p.m. Thursday, April 29, in the lobby of the Health Sciences Center.

Among the division’s outstanding accomplishments are the design and construction of the kidney dialysis machine, developed in conjuction with the UW’s Dr. Belding H. Scribner, and design and construction of bone marrow transplant equipment, developed in conjunction with transplant pioneer Dr. E. Donnall Thomas of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

The open house will include displays of instruments, including an early artificial kidney. A timeline will show accomplishments of the division over the years.

The division was created in 1949 as the Medical Instrument Facility. Its machine shop was instrumental in developing or improving a number of scientific instruments in wide use around the world, including the heart-lung machine, aortic heart valves, the artificial kidney, and bone marrow transplant equipment. In 1952, the division, working with UW physician Dr. Robert Bruce, developed the first treadmill for humans, allowing the patient to run in place while heart function is evaluated under exercise conditions.

Electronic services were added in 1961, to enhance the division’s developmental capabilities and to repair electronics-based equipment, which was proliferating both in research labs and in clinical use. Optical services were added in 1972, to assist in the maintenance of microscopes, including complex multi-headed and surgical scopes. In 1999, the instrumentation and methods being developed often focus on the cellular and the molecular level.

“We take ideas and turn them into instrumentation,” said manager Liz Mulligan, who has been with the division for 29 years. “This is where solutions to technical problems are devised.”

Laurie McHale