Answer: The Beatles

The Beatles didn’t just make an enormous contribution to the field of music, they indirectly helped make an enormous contribution to the field of medical research and imaging.

Although ideas about how one could image the body in slices using x-rays and radiographic film had been bouncing around since the early 1900s, it wasn’t until the 1950s that scientists had both the appropriate technology and mathematical formulas to start seriously tinkering with the idea of using radiographic techniques to create precise images of the body. Unfortunately building and prototyping such devices was enormously expensive.

In the 1960s the first commercially successful CAT scan devices were built by the medical research division of EMI. The large expense of the scanner project was offset by the profits generated by EMI’s studio and recording division, a division that was as wildly profitable as it was in large part due to the the label’s superstars: The Beatles. Profits from The Beatles meteoric rise to fame were channeled directly into the research, development, and marketing of the first CAT scan machines.