Kevin Love, ape 12, of New Berlin, Wisconsin, for his question:
Who invented X rays?
These invisible rays are one of many natural forms of energy that operate throughout the cosmic universe. X rays, light and radio are various aspects of electromagnetic energy. None of them were invented by the mind of man. Man did, however, invent gadgets to use them.
Energy of any kind is hard to measure and physicists have a basic unit to measure each different form of energy. The roentgen is the basic unit for measuring the energy of X rays. This unit is pronounced as though it were spelled Rerun. It was named in honor of the man who discovered the mysterious energy of the X ray. Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen was a professor of physics in the German University of Wurzburg. This was in the late 1900's when the world of science was interested in the behavior of gases exposed to electric currents.
Sir William Crooks of England had invented a special gadget to study this problem. It was a glass tube with most of its gaseous molecules removed. The hear vacuum inside the tube was connected to a strong electric current. Inside the Crookes tube, different gases glowed with their own identifying colors. Experimenters in England and Germany figured out that the current caused waves or particles to stream from the negative cathode to the positive anode electric plates inside the tube.
They were correct and the energy in the Crookes tube was named cathode rays. William Roentgen went farther with these experiments. He shielded the tube with black paper to test the penetrating, power of the rays. Quite by accident, he noticed a strange result on a nearby fluorescent screen. The screen plowed and continued to glow after the electric current had been shut off. He also noticed a weird happening to his hand when it passed between the tube and the screen. The lowing tube made a strange shadow of his hand on the screen and this shadow picture revealed the solid bones inside his flesh.
This was, of course, the first X ray image. But Roentpen was mystified. He did not understand it or the rays that caused it. As a Rood scientist, h e knew his mathematical equations. He was familiar with the X symbol commonly used to denote the unknown factor in a problem. It seemed sensible to name his penetrating discovery X rays. Later Roentgen made a simple device and took an X ray photograph of his hand. Medical scientists immediately saw the value of this Idea and Roentgen's X rays became famous almost overnight, and so did their discoverer. In 1901, he received the first Nobel Prize to be awarded in the field of physics.
Roentgen made his X ray discovery in 1895 but scientists still are finding new and more amazing uses for it. We have X ray machines ranging from small portables for use itta dentist's office to monsters big enough to photograph the mechanical insides of a whole automobile. We also have newer methods for creating the penetrating rays. However, a type of Crookes tube gadget still produces soft, low energy X rays as it did for the astonished William Roentgen. Our hard X rays of tremendously high energy, however, are far more penetrating and also far more dangerous to living tissue.