“…Both the Harvard and the Stanford group approached their experiments as contributions to fundamental physics, and in particular to the precise measurement of nuclear magnetic moments, especially that of hydrogen and its isotopes-for which purpose it was indeed immediately used (Arnold and Roberts, 1947;Bloch, Nicodemus, and Staub, 1948;Gardner and Purcell, 1949). Regardless, however, of the motives and interests of its originators, the NMR technique was quickly "turned around" to give quantitative measures of the magnetic fields, and hence the physical and chemical environment, in which the precessing nuclei are situated (Purcell, 1948;1952, p. 225;Rigden, 1986;Teichmann and Szymborski, 1992, pp.…”