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

Phoenician numbers

In History Today Online we explained in a previous post which were the Arabic numerals, but the truth is that they are not the only ones, and although somewhat complicated to understand, the truth is that the Phoenician numbers are perhaps much more difficult.In History Today Online we talk to you now of which are the Phoenician numbers. The Phoenicians also known as Canaanites, although they were a civilization that occupied a region called Canaan and was a territory that currently encompasses Israel, Syria and Lebanon.They always stood out for their art, closely linked to the different Mediterranean influences and as not for an alphabet that they created and that is in fact the origin of the alphabet that we know today, they also had a numerical system and that we tried to decipher below. The Phoenician Numbers: The main basis of the Phoenician numbers, are the angles and the stripes since these are the base they used to create the different numbers.Depending on how e...

John betjeman Biography

John Betjeman (London, 1906-Trebethrick, 1984) British poet.He succeeded C.D.Lewis as "Poet Laureate" (1972).He became known with Selected Poems (1948).His work, technically impeccable and tinged with subtle humor, uses traditional metric forms ( Summoned by bells , 1960; High and low , 1966).

Italian unification - causes, stages and dates

The Italian unification was a long-running process in which battles and alliances followed, along with a lot of diplomacy, over the years.In this article we tell what were the causes, the different stages with their most relevant characters and the main dates. Article index Italian states before the unification The unification of the Italian states took place in the 19th century, at that time Italy was divided into different states according to their location: Sardinia-Piedmont, Lombardy and Venice Parma, Modena, Tuscany and the Papal States; the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies Characteristics of Italian unification At the beginning of time, under the Roman Empire, Italy was unified as a single state but after the fall of the Empire was co nvirtiendo in different independent kingdoms. Victor Manuel II Vittorio Emanuele Maria Alberto Eugenio Ferdinando Luca Tommaso di Savoia-Carignano was better known as Victor Manuel II, King of Piedmont-Sardinia.One of the most impo...

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier Biography

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (Paris 1605-Moscow 1689) French traveler.He made several trips through western and central Europe, and between 1603 and 1639 he visited Constantinople, Persia and India.He published various accounts of his travels, including The Six Voyages, by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier...To Turkey, Persia and the Indies (1676).

Heinrich maier Biography

Heinrich Maier (Heidenheim, 1867-Berlin, 1933) German philosopher.He produced a "critical realism", along the lines of H.Driesch.He is the author, among other works, of Aristotle's syllogistics (1896-1900) and of The philosophy of reality (1926-1935).

Characteristics of the National States

Next we want to talk to you in Overhistory of what are National States, what they mean and how they were formed and what consequences this formation brought to those who are modern states of today. Characteristics of National States During the second half of the 19th century, the National States will be brewing, after a long evolutionary process that dates back to the rise of the Modern States in the 15th and 15th centuries XVI. We will now see what are the main characteristics of these political systems. In the National States, as the name implies, the idea of ​​the "Nation" will be vital. We could describe the "nation" as a large community of individuals "united by a history, a culture, an ethnic composition and a language in common." But, as we explained in the article dedicated to the modern states and the national states , in practice many states included several nations within their borders.In other cases, such as the American count...

Carlos Hugo de Borbón Parma Biography

Carlos Hugo de Borbón Parma (Paris, 1930-Barcelona, ​​2012) Spanish politician.First-born son of Don Javier de Borbón Parma y Braganza, Duke of Parma and aspiring to the throne of Spain, and of Doña Magdalena de Borbón Busset, as well as a direct descendant of Felipe V, Carlos Hugo de Borbón Parma spent his early childhood in the Italian city of Viareggio, from which his family moved to the castle of Bestz, a family possession in the French Bourbons. Carlos Hugo de Borbón Parma He was educated in a school of the Benedictine Order and, after the outbreak of World War II, he left for Canada with part of his family.There he studied law, which he completed after his return to the European continent, where he received his doctorate in law from the Sorbonne University (France) and in economics from Oxford (United Kingdom). He later worked at the German Deutsche Bank and collaborated with the former Christian Democrat Chancellor Erhard and other relevant politicians, after which, in ...

James hargreaves Biography

James Hargreaves (Hoarstones, 1834-Widnes, 1915) British chemist.Dedicated to the chemical industry, he perfected soap manufacturing methods, started recycling processes for the recovery of phosphates and invented an engine, a precursor to the diesel engine, that used liquid tar as fuel.

Hitler's Olympic Games in 1936

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) designated Berlin in 1931 as the host city of the XI Summer Olympics.Berlin had already been selected as an Olympic city for the celebration of the 1916 Games , but the outbreak of World War I made its celebration impossible.An Olympic Germany was what Adolf Hitler inherited when in 1933 he was appointed Supreme Chancellor of Germany, an opportunity he would not miss, in what is known as Hitler's Olympic Games in 1936 .in the Berlin Olympics ?, How was sport used as a propaganda instrument ?, Who was the winner of the Berlin Olympics ?. Poster of the 1936 Berlin Olympics Article index Hitler's Olympic Games in 1936 | Antecedent Barcelona 1931, the IOC meets in congress to discuss the organization of the next Summer Olympics.The candidates were two cities Barcelona and Berlin .At that time the organizing country of the Summer Olympics was also the organizer of the Winter Olympics. Barcelona fought to be the Olympic venue in ...