The first X-ray
@facethenationIn 1880s — '90s, the invention of the X-ray created an amazing step forward in the history of medicine. Debate still persists as to who was the first to discover X-rays. Was it the Ukrainian scientist Ivan Pavlovich Puluj or a German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, the 1901 Nobel Prize winner?
Ivan Puluj was a physicist, inventor, an early developer of the use of X-rays for medical imaging. His contributions were largely neglected until the end of the 20th century.
Puluj did heavy research into cathode rays, publishing several papers about it between 1880 und 1882. As a result of experiments into what he called cold light Puluj developed "the lamp of Pulyuy" which was mass-produced for a period — the prototype of modern X-Ray machines.
From 1890 to 1895 years in several European newspapers were published pictures received during experiments with his own lamp: picture of a mouse (where is visible its skeleton), picture of scientist daughter’s hand with a pin clearly visible under it.
Through 14 years in the journal of "Wurzburg’s Physical Medical Society" Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen published an article entitled "A new type of radiation" concerning exactly X-rays. Then he patented the discovery of X-Rays and was nominated for the Nobel Prize.
In November 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen was experimenting with an electron-discharge tube, which he had covered with black cardboard to block the distracting glow caused by electrons striking the tube’s glass walls. To his surprise, he noticed out of the corner of his eye that a fluorescent screen more than a meter away was also glowing. Röntgen dubbed these mysterious rays capable of passing through glass "X" (for unknown) and subsequently tried to block them with a variety of materials — aluminum, copper, even the walls of his lab — to no avail.
When Röntgen held a piece of lead in front of the electron-discharge tube, it blocked the rays, but he was shocked to see his own flesh glowing around his bones on the fluorescent screen behind his hand. He then placed photographic film between his hand and the screen and captured the world’s first X-ray image. Six weeks later, at the close of 1895, he published his observations and mailed his colleagues a photograph of the bones of his wife’s hand, showing her wedding ring on her fourth finger.
However, Röntgen couldn't use X-Rays in medicine. Because the exposure of his device based on the lamp was 40-50 minutes, making it impossible to use in medicine. When Puluj found out about this, he could concentrate the rays into the beam and created a device with a time of exposure 2-5 seconds and personally made the world’s first picture of skeleton of stillborn child, therefore implemented this invention into medicine.
The first clinical X-ray was performed on February 3, 1896. No precautions to minimize exposure were taken since the dangers of X-rays were not known at the time.
