On Jul. 25, 1978, the first test-tube baby was born in the United Kingdom. Louise Joy Brown is an English woman known for being the first human to have been born after conception by in vitro fertilisation, or IVF at Oldham General Hospital, Oldham, England. She was by delivered by Caesarian section shortly before midnight.

The birth of Louise Brown was a worldwide media event, and stories of IVF and other ART have continued to feature prominently in news media, science documentaries, fiction and the arts ever since.

IVF was not yet an everyday technology, but it had become routinised and, in the UK at least, largely normalised. This normalisation had occurred not only because of the technology’s usefulness as a platform for other technologies but also because of its close association with the hope and happiness brought by much wanted babies like Louise Brown since 1978.