Norwalk virus had been discovered by Albert Kapikian using immune electron microscopy and Ruth Bishop and colleagues had seen different particles that they thought were viruses in gut biopsies by thin section electron microscopy. But the preparation of thin sections was too cumbersome for routine use, and Flewett and his co-workers showed that these viruses could be seen by electron microscopy directly in faeces. Flewett and his colleagues in his Birmingham laboratory had observed these viruses in the faeces of sick children before the publication of Ruth Bishop's paper but they failed to realise that they were the cause of the infection. The virus particles have a wheel-shaped appearance by electron microscopy, and it was Flewett who gave them the name "rotavirus," by which they have been known since. Flewett wrote: 'At the South Wiltshire Virology Society I met Gerald Woode, then at Compton, in late 1973. He described a virus causing diarrhoea in calves. I realized we had much the same in children. We found his virus and ours were related – something new. We called them rotaviruses'