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

Francisco Galí Biography

Francisco Galí (Seville, 1539-Mexico, 1591) Spanish navigator.In 1582 he undertook a trip to the coast of North America by order of the viceroy of Mexico Pedro Moya.He explored some of the islands of the Hawaiian archipelago, the coast of Baja California and the San Francisco Bay.He wrote an account of his travels.

Joseph Kasavubu Biography

Joseph Kasavubu (Tshela, 1910-Boma, 1969) Politician of Zaire.Defender of the interests of the Congolese vis-à-vis Belgium and of their independence, he actively participated in organizations aimed at achieving these ends, mainly in ABAKO (the nationalist movement "Alianza de Bakongo").He was the first president of the newly proclaimed Republic from 1960 to 1965, once independence from Belgium was achieved. Joseph Kasavubu In an early stage of his life, influenced perhaps by the education received from the Catholic missionaries, he served as a lay teacher.Subsequently, in 1942, he became a senior officer in the civil service, the most important position that a native of the Congo could access within the Belgian colonial administration.At the end of that decade he turned all his efforts into different Congolese independence movements that fought against the Belgian authorities, at the head of cultural organizations and student groups that were really masked political fo...

Hasday ibn Shaprut Biography

Hasday ibn Shaprut (Jaén, 915-Córdoba, 970) Hebraic-Spanish politician and patron.He was in the service of Caliph Abd al-Rahman III and actively intervened in his foreign policy.Appointed head of the Jewish aljamas of al-Andalus, he maintained relations with the eastern and North African Talmudic schools.Patron of his coreligionists, he laid the foundations of Jewish development in al-Andalus.

Jean Jacques Dessalines Biography

Jean Jacques Dessalines (Guinea, 1758-Jacmel, 1806) Emperor of Haiti (1804-1806).A slave in the French colony of Santo Domingo, he adopted the name of his master, from whom he fled in 1789.Two years later, at the outbreak of the black revolution led by Toussaint Louverture, he took his side; organized one of the slave bands that rejected the British invasion attempt and collaborated in the formation of a black state. Jean Jacques Dessalines In 1802 an army sent by Napoleon, under the command of French general Charles Leclerc, overthrew Toussaint Louverture.Dessalines had to accept the deposition and deportation of Toussaint Louverture and surrender to Leclerc, who entrusted him with command of the southern sector of the island.But when Napoleon's intention to reinstate slavery became evident in 1803, Dessalines, taking advantage of the weakness of the French army and with British help, led a rebellion that drove the French from the island. That same year a a congress held ...

Jose Zorrilla Biography

José Zorrilla (Valladolid, 1817-Madrid, 1893) Spanish writer.It is the main representative of medieval and legendary romanticism.In 1833 he entered the University of Toledo as a law student, and in 1835 he went to the University of Valladolid.José Zorrilla published his first verses in the Valladolid newspaper El Artista . José Zorrilla In Madrid, after abandoning his university career, he achieved fame after reading some of his verses at the funeral of Larra (1837).He held the position of the latter in the writing of El Español , where he published the series of poems entitled Poesías (1837), the first of a set of eight volumes that he completed in 1840.His poetic success would be renewed in 1852 with a descriptive poem, Granada , which remained unfinished.In 1839 he married Matilde O'Reilly, of whom he was widowed very soon.

Gerard walschap Biography

Gerard Walschap (Londerzeel, Flanders, 1898-Antwerp, 1989) Belgian writer in the Flemish language.His novels dealt with, from a strictly religious perspective, the political, moral and existential conflicts of the present time.The trilogy The Roothooft Family (1929-1933); Sister Virgilia (1951), his masterpiece; Rebellion in the Congo (1953) and Alter ego (1964).He also wrote plays, poems and essays.

Johann Philipp Wesdin Biography

Johann Philipp Wesdin (Called Pauline of Saint Bartholomew; Hof, 1748-Rome, 1806) Austrian missionary.Carmelite, she learned oriental languages ​​in Rome.A missionary in Malabar, he is the author of the first Sanskrit grammar (1790) and revealed the affinities between this language and the Indo-European.

Fray Mauro Tenda Biography

Fray Mauro Tenda (Nice, 17th century) Savoyard Capuchin.Arrived in Madrid in 1698, his friendship with Froilán Díaz-confessor of King Carlos II-allowed him to enter the court as an exorcist, convincing the king to be possessed.His intrigues in favor of the Austrians in the succession question earned him being arrested (1700) by the Inquisitor General Baltasar de Mendoza, and expelled from Spain.

Ilias Venezis Biography

Ilias Venezis (Aivali, Asia Minor, 1904-Athens, 1973) Greek writer.The novel Matrícula 31328 (1931), which recounts his experience of deportation after the Greco-Turkish war (1920-1921), is his main work.He is also the author of novels ( Serenidad , 1939; Tierra eolia, 1943, and Los vancidos, 1954), of short stories ( The archipelago, 1969), from travel books ( Autumn in Italy, 1950, and Eftalón y viajes, 1973) and from the historical essay Los argonauts (1962).