It all started out with a bell pepper. In February 1978, Siemens began developing a new technology for medical imaging in Erlangen, a technology that would come to be known today as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). But before the Siemens developers entered the unit’s narrow opening themselves, they used an unusual test subject – a bell pepper.

Its fairly blurry image is now on display at the Siemens MedMuseum, on Gebbertstrasse, bearing witness to an extraordinary episode in history. “A bell pepper is a nice size, it has a lot of structures, and it doesn’t move during a long exposure time,” says Arnulf Oppelt, one of the first MRI developers, looking back at the exciting early days of this technology.