In the late 1950s, Norwegian toymaker Asmund Laerdal received an unusual brief: to design a life-like mannequin that resembled an unconscious patient.Peter Safar, an Austrian doctor, had just developed the basics of CPR, a lifesaving technique that keeps blood and oxygen flowing to the brain and vital organs after the heart has stopped beating.He was eager to teach it to the public, but had a problem – the deep chest compressions often resulted in fractured ribs, which meant practical demonstrations were impossible.It was in his search for a solution that he was introduced to Laerdal, an intrepid innovator then in his forties who possessed extensive knowledge of soft plastics, honed through years of work with children’s toys and model cars. He had even begun to collaborate with the Norwegian Civil Defence to develop imitation wounds for training purposes.Laerdal, who had rescued his son from drowning by applying pressure to his ribcage and pushing water out of his lungs just a few years earlier, was eager to help, and the two decided to create a training model.The Norwegian toymaker had a vision: It needed to look unthreatening, and assuming that men would not want to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a male dummy, it should be a woman.So he went …
