The linear accelerator (linac) is the accepted workhorse in radiotherapy in 2006. The first medical linac treated its first patient, in London, in 1953, so the use of these machines in clinical practice has been almost co-existent with the lifetime of Physics in Medicine and Biology. This review is a personal selection of things the authors feel are interesting in the history, particularly the early history, and development of clinical linacs. A brief look into the future is also given. One significant theme throughout is the continuity of ideas, building on previous experience. We hope the review might re-connect younger radiotherapy physicists in particular with some of the history and emphasize the continual need, in any human activity, to remain aware of the past, in order to make best use of past experience when taking decisions in the present.

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Reliable bone scans were obtained in 70 patients and 17 control subjects using 99mTc-labelled poly-or pyrophosphate with a minimum of patient disturbance.Using these radiopharmaceuticals and a gamma camera system a practical facility for eficient skeletal imaging is now available for nuclear medicine departments in general hospital practice.BONE scanning is a well-established technique for the diagnosis of skeletal metastases (Charkes et al., 1968).

We have recently observed that check radiographs produced on some of our linear accelerators have exhibited a greatly enlarged penumbra in the radial (G–T) direction. The effect was however observed only on fast diagnostic film and not on the much slower radiotherapy verification film.