How Did the Invention of the X-Ray Machine Change Society?

In 1895, William Roentgen, a 50-year-old professor of physics at Germany’s University of Wurzberg, made a discovery that would in a very short time change medical and human history. During an experiment in which he was exploring the path electrical rays took from an induction coil through a glass tube covered with heavy black paper, Roentgen noticed that the rays illuminated a florescent screen across the room, causing it to glow despite the fact that the tube was covered. Obviously, the electromagnetic rays were able to pass through material.

Without realizing it, Roentgen had become the first person to discover how to use electromagnetic radiation to create the X-ray. The first X-ray is one he took of his wife’s hand. Prior to this, tumors, broken bones and bullets buried within bodies could only be assessed via direct examination by a doctor, and how well a patient fared depended on the skill of the physician. Within a month after Roentgen’s announcement, doctors were using X-rays for diagnostic purposes, but the first X-ray machine for medical purposes wasn’t designed until 1913. By 1896, an X-ray department was established in a Scottish hospital that produced X-rays of a kidney stone and a penny lodged in a child’s throat.

The X-ray brought about immense changes to society. Doctors, for the first time, could see images of the human heart and brain and the medical specialty of radiology was born. By May of 1896, the X-ray had its first medical use, when it was used in Naples to locate bullets in the arm of a soldier wounded in an Italian campaign against the Ethiopians. A German doctor would find a sarcoma in the tibia of a child. Before long, X-rays would be used to fight cancer (with radiation therapy) as well as discover it.

X-rays have numerous other uses besides medical ones. Physicists now use X-ray lasers to probe the structure of crystals and atoms. In 1949, a a team led by Herbert Friedman of the Naval Research Academy put several small Geiger counters -- which detect radiation – aboard a captured German V-2 rocket and launched it 50 miles into the air. From this experiment and others, scientists discovered that the sun and stars emit X-rays, a discovery that has helped us find distant galaxies. And biologists have used X-ray microscopes to image tiny organisms and cell structures that ordinary microscopes cannot detect.

Though sometimes taken for granted, X-ray technology has helped to shape modern medicine in some significant ways and has even permeated popular culture through film references and its use in radical forms of art. Roentgen's discovery also led to the development of more modern imaging techniques like CT imaging, which play a critical role in medical diagnosis today. From taking pictures of dinosaurs – in 2010, a special, hair-thin X-ray beam was used to explore a fossil that turned out to be half dinosaur, half bird -- to their use in security scanners at airports today, X-rays are an integral part of modern life.