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Unprotected experiments in the U.S. in 1896 with an early X-ray tube (Crookes tube), when the dangers of radiation were largely unknown.[1]The history of radiation protection begins at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries with the realization that ionizing radiation from natural and artificial sources can have harmful effects on living organisms.
Natural color X-ray photogram of a wine scene. Note the edges of hollow cylinders as compared to the solid candle. William Coolidge explains medical imaging and X-rays.. An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays.
On 11 January 1896 he made the first use of X-rays under clinical conditions when he radiographed the hand of an associate, revealing a sterilised needle beneath the surface. [4] A month later on 14 February he took the first radiograph to direct a surgical operation. He also took the first X-ray of the human spine.
Researchers had already discovered that X-rays could kill bacteria by 1896. The predominant theory at the time was that cancer was some kind of parasitic infection. Louis Charles Émile Lortet and Philibert Jean Victor Genoud tried to kill tuberculosis in infected guinea pigs using X-rays from March to June 1896 in the same city of Lyon. [7] [3]
X-ray experiments in pulmonary tuberculosis proved useless. Aside from the medical profession losing faith in the ability of x-ray therapy, the public increasingly viewed it as a dangerous type of treatment. This resulted in a period of pessimism about the use of x-rays, which lasted from about 1905 to 1910 or 1912. [21]
In 1895, the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered and extensively studied X-rays, which were later used in X-ray spectroscopy. One year later, in 1896, French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity, and Dutch physicist Pieter Zeeman observed spectral lines being split by a magnetic field. [47] [13]
Wolfram Conrad Fuchs (1865–1908) was a German-born electrical engineer who became a pioneer in radiography.He opened the first x-ray laboratory in the United States in Chicago, and had completed over 1400 x-ray examinations by 1896.
On January 27, 1896, Wright produced an X-ray photograph, barely a month after Wilhelm Röntgen's seminal paper On A New Kind Of Rays was published on December 28, 1895. This was the first X-ray image produced in the country. [9] He contributed numerous scientific papers, chiefly on astronomical and electrical subjects, to various publications.