EKG machines are some of the most important pieces of medical equipment that are found in today’s doctors’ offices, clinics and hospitals. There are few medical facilities that do not have EKG machines in the United States and other developed nations. Dutch researcher Willem Einthoven originally invented EKG machines, which were named after the German word “elektrokardiogram,” in 1901 after about 20 years of work on the subject. These machines detect the heart’s electrical impulse upward and downward shifts or deflections, and the invention earned Einthoven a Nobel Prize in 1924.

The EKG machines that people use today are much different than Einthoven’s original invention, but the purpose is the same. The original machines used six chest leads and four limb leads to the electrodes applied to the chest to pick up tiny currents, which were then recorded on graph paper. Today’s EKG machines are electronic and fully automatic, and some even give preliminary interpretations. A full reading by a cardiologist is almost always done in practice, however, to ensure accuracy.

Modern medical facilities can rely on EKG machines for accurate recordings with far fewer leads, and they can even be wireless so caregivers and patients can be in any location. The patients are monitored through telemetry with the wireless models. While the old machines had to be set to every section of an EKG reading, the new machines can generate all 12 leads automatically, and most of them can be set to interpret automatically.

Without EKG machines we would not know nearly as much about the state of each patient’s heart functions during an urgent situation. Since the heart is so vital to life, this was clearly a vital invention all those years ago.