X-ray Photography

                         X-ray Photography (1895)

        Rontgen discovers how to photograph inside the bodies of living things.

Introduction                          

                                An X-ray is a form of electromagnetic   radiation with a very short wavelength, in the range 10   to 0.01 nanometers. German physicist Wilhelm  Rontgen (1845-1923) was experimenting with   cathode rays in 1895 when he realized that these   produced another form of radiation when they hit the   glass of the cathode ray tube. He called them X-rays, as   ‘X’ stands for the unknown in mathematics. Rontgen   discovered that X-rays passed through soft materials,   such as paper, card and fabric, and produced   fluorescence and can be used to form images on a   barium-coated photographic plate and discovered the X-   rays passed through the flesh, but not through her   bones, or her ring. Rontgen was awarded the first Noble   prize for physics in 1901.

  Information                              

                        X –rays are a form of ionizing radiation, causing ions to be produced   from the atoms that they hit, which is why they produce fluorescence. It was not   known until the 1950s that X-rays can damage living cells, causing cancer. Some,   but not all who worked with X-rays before this, including Rontgen, protected   themselves from the radiation by using lead shields.

                                                We now take for granted the crucial role X-rays perform in medical diagnosis, and this application developed rapidly after Rontgen’s initial discovery. X-rays also proved invaluable to crystallographers who used the scatter-patterns to investigate the structure of materials. Soon after their discovery, the harmful effect of X-rays were also harnessed to develop radiographic treatments for cancer.