Skip to main content

X-ray history

The X-rays were discovered in 1895 and from there they became a very revolutionary application in many branches of science, from astronomy to radiographs that we have not done so many times.the 120th anniversary of the X-rays knowing his inventor and the research that led him to such an important scientific advance.

Article index

Who invented the X-rays?

The inventor or, rather, the person who discovered the X-rays was Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen , a German physicist who was focused on the field of electromagnetics Nothing else to present his discovery, Rontgen's theory received great attention from critics and public, and was translated into French, English or Russian.

Although it is not a name as well known today as that of others you celebrate writers, the name of Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen is written in gold letters in the medical field, where he has had and has and numerous applications.The importance of his discovery was such in his day that he was the first Nobel Prize winner in Physics in 1901 .

But how did he really discover them? Was that what I was looking for or, like so many other inventions, arose almost by chance?

How were X-rays discovered?

The November 8, 1895 the physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen , was conducting experiments to analyze the violet fluorescence of the cathode rays , for which he used a device called Crookes tube .But an unexpected effect caught my attention: a subtle yellow-greenish glow on a cardboard with a solution of barium platinum-cyanide crystals.This prompted some small tests to see what was happening.

Rontgen began to move the solution away more and more, checking that the glow I had.It was a very penetrating radiation but invisible to the human eye.The experiments continued for several weeks to try to understand the properties of these rays, so far never studied, which led to a new discovery.When trying to make a photograph I check that the plates were veiled.

This new event led him to think Rontgen that the rays influenced the photographic emulsion, which triggered new tests.Soon I see that the rays crossed the matter and impressed their form in the photography .At the time he decided to experiment with the human body.His wife exposed her hand to the rays and placed it on the plate.They thus obtained the first x-ray of the human body (including her ring!), a advance that would later revolutionize medicine.

Rontgen decided or call his discovery "incognita rays", or "x-rays". His studies had a high impact on the scientific community, obtaining in 1901 the Nobel Prize of Physics .

X-ray applications

X-ray history

Most of us have thought about it,« How it would be nice to have X-rays to see Pepito or the neighbor of the third without clothes ".Do not deny it.At the moment there is no evidence that such an apparatus exists, and if there were we do not believe that it would last long in the market.But X-rays have other applications of much more relevance.

As we know, X-rays have given rise to specialties such as radiology , which allows you to see the inside of the human body to analyze the state of bones or organs.

This type of "technology" is also often used for reasons of security .For example, special security forces have X-ray equipment to see through certain materials, while in other places, such as airports , they are used to check if passengers carry something hidden.

X-ray history

However, X-rays may also have other uses which are not as well known among the middle population.For example, they are used to study fossils and wreckage from millions of years ago without damaging it.

Technological advances allow various radiologies to be made of objects consisting of a kind of transverse plates that, all joined together, would form the object itself in 3D.This technology, assisted by computers, is used, among other things, for the ham salting process .

Finally, another of its uses has to see with art and design; X-rays are also used to find out if a picture is authentic or to determine the purity of precious stones .

You can find much more information about X-rays in this History Channel documentary:

Images

Google

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Gerardo Rueda Biography

Gerardo Rueda (Madrid, 1926- id. , 1996) Spanish painter and one of the most prominent members of abstract art in our country.For his pictorial constructions he used a wide range of materials (cardboard, wood, cloth, etc.), with which he sought to create a game of radical contrasts of textures; As for color, he sometimes adopted monochrome ( Azul , 1972).He participated in the Hispano-American Biennial of Havana (1953) and in the Venice Biennial (1960).In 1963 he founded with F.Zóbel the Museum of Abstract Art of Cuenca.His works include Blanco, Rojo y Negro (1975), Alea (1978) and the stained glass windows of Cuenca Cathedral (1991).In 1989 he donated part of his graphic work to the National Library.

Elio Donato Biography

Elio Donato (4th century AD) Latin grammarian.Preceptor of Saint Jerome, he wrote some Commentaries to the works of Terence and Virgil and a grammar considered one of the most complete works of its kind in Antiquity. Donato (right) with Terence and his commentators The famous grammarian Elio Donato was considered the" grammaticus urbis Romae "par excellence.Together with the rhetorician Victorino, through severe studies he tutored a whole generation of diligent disciples; Among them was Saint Jerome himself, who repeatedly quotes Elio Donato with the reverent title of "praeceptor meus", speaks of his unusual doctrine and places it at its peak in the year 353.His work must be understood as that of a master that he wrote for his school. From Donato we keep an Ars grammatica in two versions, both due to the same author: a "minor", of a catechetical nature, for initiates or "infants" and referring to the eight parts of speech; and anothe...

John Dos Passos Biography

John Dos Passos (John Roderigo Dos Passos, Chicago, 1896-Baltimore, 1970) American storyteller, prominent member of the so-called "Lost Generation", a heterogeneous group of authors that usually include poets like Ezra Pound and novelists like Ernest Hemingway and F.Scott Fitzgerald.John Dos Passos became famous above all for Manhattan Transfer (1925), a work that, with its panoramic and objective vision of the city, spearheaded an important urban trend in the contemporary novel. John Dos Passos Grandson of a Portuguese shoemaker and illegitimate son of a lawyer, he was educated in the maternal home.In 1917 he graduated from Harvard University, where he met intellectuals linked to the group "Harvard aesthetes." During the First World War he was an ambulance driver on the French front, an experience that provided him with material for his novel The Initiation of a Man: 1917 (1920).This was followed by Three Soldiers (1921), with which he achieved critica...

John baskerville Biography

John Baskerville (Wolverley, 1706-Birmingham, 1775) British printer.He was a teacher, but abandoned his profession to dedicate himself to typography, where he achieved notable fame for the aesthetic perfection of printing characters, which he personally cast and engraved.He was also the inventor of vellum.

Gherardo Starnina Biography

Gherardo Starnina (Florence, c. 1354- id. , between 1409 and 1413) Italian painter.Mentioned as a member of the Florence painters' brotherhood (1387), his activity in Toledo and Valencia between 1398 and 1401 is documented.Of his activity in Italy, no certain works are known to him.Vasari attributed to him the frescoes in the chapel of San Jerónimo in the Carmine church in Florence, with a late Gothic style.The frescoes of the Castellani chapel in Santa Croce, the decoration of the collegiate church of Empoli and a panel with the Tebaida are also attributed to him.In Spain he was one of the representatives of international Valencian painting.The altarpiece of the Chapel of the Savior and the one of the Crucifixion and the frescoes of the Chapel of San Blas, in Toledo Cathedral, are attributed to him.

Juana la Beltraneja, between impotence and betrayal

A supposedly impotent king, a dubiously illegitimate daughter and a half-sister capable of being able to make up, basically, the elements that made the kingdom of Castile in the second half of the fifteenth century live a first uprising and a War of Succession afterwards.The result was none other than the rise to the Castilian throne of Isabel la Catolica (the stepsister) and the retirement for life to a convent of Juana de Trastamara , legitimate crown heiress. The first wife of Enrique IV de Castilla , Blanca de Navarra , alleges the impotence of the king in his marriage annulment process.That process would end ruling such impotence, but only with respect to the queen, or what is the same, that the king was able to fornicate with any woman, except with that He was joined by the sacrament. A nobility in a constant struggle for power with the monarchical institution, however, was responsible for keeping alive the rumor of impotence that would accompany his faint-hearted E...

Emmanuel Jacquin de Margerie Biography

Emmanuel Jacquin de Margerie (Paris, 1862- id ., 1953) French geologist and geomorphologist.He was a member of the Geological Society of France and director of the Alsace-Lorraine Map Service.Outstanding participant in all international geology congresses, among his numerous works include The landforms (1888, in collaboration with G.De la Noë), El Jura (1936 ) and Criticism and Geology (1943-1954).

James tissot Biography

James Tissot (Joseph Jacques Tissot; Nantes, 1836-Bouillon, 1902) French painter.A disciple of Lamotte and Flandrin, James Tissot had his first success in 1861 with the painting Faust and Margarita , which was acquired by the State. He participated in the war of 1870-1871, and after it he settled in London, where his work soon acquired prestige.At the same time he dedicated himself to engraving, working alongside Seymour Haden; also in this genre he would achieve recognition. Tranquility (c.1881), by James Tissot A radical change to him it would lead to illustrate the life of Jesus Christ.To do this he moved to Palestine, where he resided for ten years.The result was 350 watercolors inspired by the gospels, of great realism, that were exhibited in Paris and London. Later he shut himself up in the abbey of Nouillon to prepare a similar work on the Old Testament, but death prevented him from completing the project.Among his most important paintings are The appointment on t...

Adriaan van roomen Biography

Adriaan Van Roomen (Leuven, 1561-Mainz, 1615) Flemish mathematician.He studied in Germany and Italy.Professor in Louvain and Würzburg, in 1595 he was appointed astronomer to the King of Poland.His works dealt mainly with plane and spherical geometry and trigonometry.He proposed and gave a solution to an algebraic equation of degree 45.Among his works are Ideae mathematicae (1593) and Canon triangulorum sphericorum (1609).

Alberico da Barbiano Biography

Alberico da Barbiano (1344-1409) Italian condottier.He began the reign of the condottieri with the Company of Saint George, which he formed with Italian soldiers to displace foreign mercenaries.He was at the service of Popes Gregory XI and Urban VI.