Photograph by: Wilhelm Conrad RÖntgen Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
Prior to the discovery of x-rays, the human body would be cut into, to locate any internal complications. When Wilhelm Conrad RÖntgen discovered how the different frequencies of electromagnetic energy emitted by a cathode tube penetrated solid objects and exposed sheets of photographic paper, he realised he was at the cusp of an important finding. Preceding his discovery, Wilhelm was enmeshed in the study of the outcome of electric current being passed through a gas of extremely low pressure. Previous studies on this had classified the emission as being cathode rays. However, in his tests, Wilhelm stumbled upon a new kind of ray. Unsure of what it was, he called it x-ray.
The official account of the Nobel Prize states this… “On the evening of 8 November 1895, Wilhelm found that if the discharge tube is enclosed in a sealed, thick black carton to exclude all light, and if he worked in a dark room, a paper plate covered on one side with barium platinocyanide, placed in the path of the rays, became fluorescent, even when it was as far as two meters from the discharge tube. During subsequent experiments, he found that objects of different thicknesses interposed in the path of the rays showed variable transparency to them, when recorded on a photographic plate.” His first test subject was his wife, Anna Bertha RÖntgen. When he placed her hand in the path of the rays, and over a photographic plate, he noticed how the plate slowly developed to reveal shadows thrown by the bones in her hand, as well as the ring she wore on her finger. He also observed how the shadows were fainter around the fleshy part of her hand—skin and tissue being more permeable to the rays. The breakthrough won Wilhelm the first Nobel Prize ever, granted for Physics, in1901. Despite its innumerable applications, and the money it would have generated him, Wilhelm never patented his discovery.
However, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Individuals exposed to the x-rays suffered from radiation burns and hair loss, even death, after prolonged exposure. It was only a century later that Gerrit Kemerink, a medical physicist, after getting his hands on an x-ray machine from the 1890s, similar to what Wilhelm used, deduced the extent of radiation that patients were exposed to—1500 times greater than the current dosage. It also took 90 minutes for the machine to create an exposure, in contrast to the fraction of a second that it takes today. The only person who probably wasn’t as taken in by the discovery was his wife Anna, who after looking at the photograph of her hand, commented, “I have seen my death.”
This article originally appeared in the October 2019 issue of Better Photography.