THE spring of 1896 must have been an extraordinary time. The world was still reeling from the news of Mr Roentgen's mysterious X rays, which could apparently see through skin, when Henri Becquerel announced in Paris that he had discovered radioactivity. Matter could now change from one element to another it must have sounded like alchemy.
The world would never be the same again. From these discoveries others would quickly follow the electron, the structure of the atom and its nucleus, the discovery of radium, new cancer treatments, and, ultimately the electronic and nuclear revolutions that would shape so much of the 20th century.
But these were still in the future when, one November evening in 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen noticed an odd shadow cast when he passed his hand before a cathode ray tube he was experimenting with in his Zurich laboratory.
The shadow was especially odd because Roentgen could see in it the bones of his hand. Not surprisingly, he was late home for dinner that night, and probe ably every other night until December 22nd, 1895, when, after weeks of experiments, he took an X ray of his wife's hand.
Bertha Roentgen is said to have been quite frightened when she saw the result after the 15 minute exposure. It's hardly your typical family picture, but today, with its heavy black band marking the wedding ring on her bony finger, it is world famous.
News of discovery spread
Roentgen published details of his discovery, which for want of a name he called X-rays, just after Christmas. The news spread rapidly round the world and, by January 17th, the Irish Freeman's Journal reported "Newly discovered light some striking experiments."
The equipment needed for these striking experiments was available in any decent laboratory and scientists were soon eagerly producing their own X-rays.
James Murray, in the new anthology A century of medical radiation in Ireland, writes of how science teachers here, like the Rev Henry Gill at Clongowes, were among those recreating Roentgen's experiments, while the Lancet announced that, on February 15th, Professor John Joly would give a public demonstration in Dublin of the new Roentgen rays.
As often happens with scientific discoveries, others had been there first but had not" spotted the significance of what they had seen. Some time before Roentgen's discovery, Sir William Crookes, the man who invented the Crookes' tube used by Roentgen (now called a cathode ray tube), found that photographic plates stored near the tube were already fogged when he went to use them.
But where Roentgen saw an interesting effect, Crookes saw only a manufacturing defect he returned the plates to the supplier, who duly apologised In 1896, Roentgen, asked what he thought when he first saw the effects of X-rays, said "I did not think, I investigated." Others saw all kinds of possibilities in the new rays, not all of them good. Maids would be able to see into bedrooms, t'was feared, and X-ray spectacles would reveal all. But at least one London firm saw the marketing potential and advertised X-ray proof women's underwear.
First medical X-ray
The medical potential was quickly spotted. The world's first clinical radiograph, of a needle lodged in a dancer's foot, was taken in January 1896, and the first Irish diagnostic radiograph was probably taken in February, by Dr Cecil Shaw in Belfast.
According to a report in the Lancet of February 29th, Dr Shaw gave a most interesting lecture the previous day when he unveiled a number of X-ray photographs, including one of the band of a man who had shot his finger during revolver practice.
However, traditionally, the credit has gone to Professor, Barrett from the Royal College of Surgeons, who on March, 16th, used X-rays to locate a needle that had lodged in a girl's hand two years before. The needle, it should be said, was successfully removed.
Roentgen, a shy man who was greatly annoyed at his celebrity status, never patented his discovery, saying his reward was knowing its value to medicine. Awarded the first ever Nobel physics prize in 1902, he died a poor man in post-war in 1923. Germany Roentgen's experiments with the artificial radiation that is X-rays helped Henri Becquerel to discover the natural radiation in uranium, an effect he detected for the first time on March 1st, 1896.
Becquerel's student, Marie Sklodowska Curie, with her husband Pierre, isolated and named two new radioactive elements, polonium and radium, and the three shared the 1903 Nobel prize for physics.
In 1897, the cathode ray (or discharge) tube was again in the news, this time because the British physicist J.J. Thomson, had discovered that the particles "in flight" in the cathode rays were actually electrons. The first elementary particle had been discovered, and so began the atomic and nuclear age.
Used on Egyptian mummy
As for those X-rays, by 1897 they had been used to examine an Egyptian mummy, and in 1898, in the Sudan, a Major Battersby, formerly of the Curragh Barracks, was the first to use them in a war situation, having trained at Sir Patrick Dunn's.
Since then, X-rays have been used to peer not just into skeletons, but also into molecules helping scientists to elucidate the structure of complex molecules like DNA. Today, X-ray telescopes scan the skies for traces of black holes and other exotic structures. Who'd have believed it, back in the spring of 1896, when the popular refrain was The Roentgen rays, the Roentgen rays, What is this craze? I hear they'll gaze, Through cloak and gown and even stays, Those naughty, naughty Roentgen rays.