The Harrington rods was developed in 1953 by Paul Harrington, a professor of orthopedic surgery at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

Harrington rods were intended to provide a means to reduce the curvature and to provide more stability to a spinal fusion. Before the Harrington rod was invented, scoliosis patients had their spines fused without any instrumentation to support it; such fusions required many months in plaster casts, and large curvatures could progress despite fusion.