A short History of X-rays

A short History of X-rays

The discovery of X-rays in 1895 was the beginning of a revolutionary change in our understanding of the physical world.

During 1895 Röntgen carried out his investigations on the phenomenon of cathode rays. Accidently he put a piece of cardboard covered with fluorescent mineral near the experimental set and noticed it glowing in the dark when the source of cathode rays was turned on. Roentgen immediately initiated an experiment aimed at investigation of the phenomenon.

He found that that if vacuum tube, used for experiments with cathode rays, was covered tightly with thin, black cardboard and placed in a darkened room, bright glow was observed during each discharge on a screen covered with fluorescent barium platinum cyanide (placed near the device). He realised that the fluorescence was caused by an agent which could infiltrate from within the vacuum tube through dark cardboard (impermeable to visible or ultraviolet radiation) to the outside of the set. He termed this agent as x-rays.

Three days before Christmas he brought his wife into his laboratory, and they emerged with a photographof the bones in her hand and of the ring on her finger. The WürzburgPhysico-Medical Society was the first to hear of the new rays that could penetrate the body and photograph its bones. Roentgen delivered the news on the 28th of December 1895.Emil Warburg relayed it to the Berlin Physical Society on the 4th of January. The next day the Wiener Press carried the news, and the day following word of Roentgen’s discovery began to spread by telegraph around the world.

Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1845–1923).

 ( Courtesy of AIP Emilio Segré Visual Archives)

First X ray made in public. Hand of the famed

anatomist, Albert von Kölliker, made during

 Roentgen's initial lecture before the Würzburg

 Physical Medical Society on January 23, 1896.

Roentgen picture of a  newborn rabbit made

by J. N. Eder and E. Valenta of Vienna, 1896.

(Burndy Library, Dibner Institute, Cambridge,

Massachusetts.)

Radiographs of tropical fish made

by J.N. Eder and E. Valenta of Vienna,

Jaunary 1896 and presented to

Roentgen. (Burndy Library, Dibner

Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts.)

X-ACTLY SO!

The Roentgen Rays, the Roentgen Rays,

What is this craze?

The town’s ablaze

With the new phase

Of X-ray’s ways.

I’m full of daze,

Shock and amaze;

For nowadays

I hear they’ll gaze

Thro’ cloak and gown—and even stays,

These naughty, naughty Roentgen Rays.

—Wilhelma, Electrical Review,

April 17, 1896

Frank Austin urged Dr. Gilman Frost to take the first medical X-ray. Left to right: physicist Edwin Frost, patient Eddie McCarthy, Gilman Frost, and Gilman’s wife, Margaret Mead Frost. Photograph by H.H. Langill and Henry H. Barrett; from Dartmouth College Archives.

 

The Nobel Prize in Physics 1901 was awarded to Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays subsequently named after him".

Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen died at his country home near Munich on the 10th of February 1923. He was suffering from intestinal cancer.He died the age of 77 years,10 months and 14 days old.

 

By 1896 an x-ray department had been set up at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, one of the first radiology departments in the world. The head of the department, Dr John Macintyre, produced a number of remarkable x-rays: the first x-ray of a kidney stone; an x-ray showing a penny in the throat of a child, and an image of a frog's legs in motion. In the same year Dr Hall-Edwards became one of the first people to use an x-ray to make a diagnosis - he discovered a needle embedded in a woman's hand. In the first twenty years following Roentgen's discovery, x-rays were used to treat soldiers fighting in the Boar war and those fighting in WWI, finding bone fractures and imbedded bullets. Much excitement surrounded the new technology, and x-ray machines started to appear as a wondrous curiosity in theatrical shows.

It was eventually recognized that frequent exposure to x-rays could be harmful, and today special measures are taken to protect the patient and doctor. By the early 1900s the damaging qualities of x-rays were shown to be very powerful in fighting cancers and skin diseases.