Victoria Hospital, London

The first Eldorado A arrived from Vickers in July 1951. It was delivered first to the NRC s radiology laboratory, where it was loaded with its cobalt-60 source and tested by Adair Morrison and his staff. The results confirmed the radiation output of the source and the fact that the unit functioned as it should. Errington should have been ecstatic, but he was too busy worrying about the next step. His machine was ready to go, but the facility Ivan Smith was building for it at the Ontario Institute of Radiotherapy at Victoria Hospital, London, was nowhere near completion. Part of the problem was that no ordinary room would do. The wall opposite the machine had to be thick enough to block the radiation that would be projected at it. This required about forty inches of concrete. The other walls, and the ceiling, had to have eight inches of concrete to absorb scattered radiation. 

The world s first cancer treatment by a commercial cobalt-60 teletherapy unit, the Eldorado A, takes place at Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario... 

The race went down to the wire. The source for the Eldorado A reached Victoria Hospital in London on October 16,1951. In Saskatoon, Johns officially put his machine into service on October 23. But on October 27, Smith was the first actually to treat a patient. In Saskatoon, the first treatment followed on November 8. Three days later, Eldorado sponsored an official opening for the Eldorado A in London. C.D. Howe attended to commission the machine, and the event attracted wide coverage in local and national newspapers. 

Eldorado s salesmen, who had previously dealt with no equipment more elaborate than the lonotron. The hipest obstacle was the unknown and unproven nature of the product. Sales personnel could point to the Eldorado A installed at Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario as an example ofasuccessfiti model in operation. Still, few customers were brave enough to spend 30,000 on an untested item. To foster familiarity, CPD publicized the Eldorado A on the radiology conference circuit, published technical articles on its design, and lobbied interested radiologists and physicists. By the end of the year these efforts had generated four sales - not an overwhelming performance. 

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