As an influenza epidemic raged through Hungary in 1951, Gyula Takátsy, MD, had a problem. He was running out of critical influenza virus testing supplies, such as test tubes and pipettes. His solution to the shortage? The physician hand-machined a block of plastic with 6 rows of 12 indentations, each roughly the diameter of a pencil. Each indentation, or well, could be the locus for a chemical reaction formerly done in a test tube. Rather than needing 72 individual test tubes, he now had space for 72 reactions in a block of plastic little bigger than his hand. Called a microplate, this invention is one of the earliest examples of ‘high-throughput technologies’—a methodology central to the fight against COVID-19
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