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The Invention of the X-Ray Machine: A Medical Marvel
How laboratory discharge tubes became hospital X-ray equipment: early tube design, the first clinical uses in 1896, and the steady improvements that followed.
Medicine and the Body
Discovery and early use of X-ray machines.
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How laboratory discharge tubes became hospital X-ray equipment: early tube design, the first clinical uses in 1896, and the steady improvements that followed.
A history of how X-ray images changed the way hospitals diagnosed broken bones, chest disease and swallowed objects, and how the technique reshaped medical practice.
The story of Wilhelm Roentgen's November 1895 discovery in Wurzburg, the famous hand image of his wife, and how news of the rays spread around the world in weeks.
Before Roentgen's 1895 announcement, cathode ray tube experiments by Hittorf, Crookes, Lenard and others had already produced X-rays that nobody recognized.
How radiography entered the operating room and the battlefield hospital, from locating bullets in 1896 to mobile X-ray vehicles in World War I.
A history of early X-ray burns and injuries to patients and operators, and how shielding, dose limits and safety standards gradually developed. History only.
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