the brains of kittens to determine if there was any obvious changes in tissue structure: there was none. The team's enthusiasm in the success of the B-mode and the publication of the paper resulted in a change in attitudes in the medical community and more confirmed that medical diagnosis could be made. Automatic scanner Between 1958 and 1959, Donald became increasingly worried about scanning tissue deliberately to ensure he received sufficient detail, from fear of missing them. He and MacVicar had been trying unsuccessfully to image hydatidiform moles by increasing the amplification of the signal, which resulted in an increase of what Donald called "electronic grass". He stated:With high gain settings we were confronted with the danger of being deceived by "electronic grass". This danger now seemed so great that we decided to eliminate at least this error from over amplification and observer error by having an automatic scanner which would operate at a completely standardised speed.In 1958, Brown and the engineers at Hughes started work on the new automatic scanner. It was built to standardize the compound scanning process and to remove, as much as possible, operator bias from the results. The probe was mounted in a steel ball connected to a column suspended from a gantry that oscillated. When it was at a 30° angle to the normal of the skin, sensed by what Brown described as "rather indelicate looking projections on either side of the ball", the motion was reversed and the gantry supporting the column moved about 15 mm, and the process was repeated. The scans could be done in the longitudinal plane, i.e. up or down the abdomen lengthways, rather than only across the width. The machine had to be capable of scanning all the different sizes and shapes of the female form, and not only did it need to deal with the convex shape of a woman's abdomen, but also with women who were ill, pregnant, very rotund, or had some other form of pathology. Brown designed this motion of maintaining contact with the body's surface by using another motor that would reposition the probe as required. It was coupled with a pressure sensitive switch that enabled the probe to stay in constant contact with the skin. The machine had two motors: one for vertical and another for horizontal movement. However, the climbing of steep curves of heavier women presented its own problem. A