How the shy Roentgen created the X-ray Craze

Within weeks of Roentgen's discovery of the x-ray, the world went, basically, x-ray crazy. This is that wild story.
My lovely brother-in-law translated the original newspaper account from Old German if you would like to read it (it is amazingly prescient):
kathylovesphysics.com/2018/10...
If you read old German (wow!) then here is a link to the original article:
diepresse.com/layout/diepress...
As usual the music is from the lovely and talented Kim Nalley including the intro song which is her version of "Electricity, Electricity" from Schoolhouse Rock.
(ps. I know the lighting is really bad, a friend "helped" me, I won't do that again)

[@gpwgpw555]

I Am over 70 years old. As a boy in the 1950's, I would run to the shoe x-ray machine to see my feet. Now my doctor takes 3D x-rays of my heart.

[@frederickwise5238]

The shoe X ray machine. Well I remember having my feet X-rayed, every new pair of shoes, so the salesman, me and mom and dad could see how my new shoes fit. TODAY IM AFFLICTED WITH NEURPOTHY -THE NERFVES IN MY FEET AND LEGS HAVE BEEN DYING SLOWELY OVER A 25 YEAR PERIOD.-(UP TO MY KNEES NOW.) Your video spurred my memory ANEW. Over those 25 years I have wondered if all that exposure to X rays might have been contributory.

[@douglasciserella8913]

Kathy is amazing. Great energy wonderful explanations and great background

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

Thanks so much Douglas

[@merseyless]

Another fantastic video!

[@Tmanaz480]

When I was a kid in the 70s JC Penney shoe department had a machine that automatically measured your shoe size. There was a big sign on it "this is not an x-ray device". I asked my mom about it and she told me the story of people's feed being burned by the old machines.

[@Darthvanger]

In Russian it's also called Roentgen. "To do a Roentgen" means to do the chest X-ray :) An insane discovery indeed, feels so supernatural!

[@jackd.ripper7613]

When I see the red bell is for "Kathy Loves Physics" I drop the video I'm looking at or whatever I'm doing and go straight there.

[@PatGBass]

so do I!

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

Aww shucks fellas. Thanks. 😊

[@petervanderwaart1138]

I remember the x-ray machines in shoe stores. I would guess they disappeared in New Jersey in the late 1950s.

[@softwarephil1709]

Kathy, I love your videos! You do a fantastic job of providing a physics lesson with interesting - and sometimes entertaining - material about the people and circumstances that led to discoveries. I wasn’t feeling well yesterday, so I rested in my recliner and binged on at least 10 of your videos.

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

Phil Sherrod so glad you liked them and hope you are feeling better.

[@tobystewart4403]

I wonder if they fixed the problem of the incurably lazy wives?

[@shawnmulberry774]

"Anyone who was wide awake and using a Lenard Tube could have discovered the X rays"...including Lenard. Since he had the most time with the tubes you would think he could have figured it out. Seems like plenty of scientists were playing with this Lenard tube and also did not figure it out, first.

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

You can just hear the envy from Lenard, can't you?

[@ronjon7942]

Another video by Kathy, another thumbs up.

[@The-KP]

I love these contextualized tellings of the story of a discovery. Good stuff!

[@noproblem4260]

applause as always... would love a video about CT scanners first days, how the Beatles publishing company ( first with the apple) led investing, how was the computing reconstruction developed and so on..

[@NoahSpurrier]

Before Computed Tomography there was an old analog mechanical technology known as Tomography X-ray. Imagine you wanted to see something inside a person’s chest, but the ribs get in the way and make it difficult to see because the ribs block your view. Now save that thought and imagine you are by a picket fence. It’s difficult to see what’s behind the picket fence, but if you run very quickly and look past the fence at a spot past the pickets you will be able to see that spot and the pickets will just be a blur. A Tomographic x-ray worked on a similar principle. It would rotate the x-ray photo plate under a subject while the x-ray was on. The ribs would become a blur, but the center of rotation would be clear. This was an early 20th century technology. No computers involved. Computed Tomography does the same thing, but allows doing this for lots of different focal points at once. The x-ray beam and detector spinning around is like running past a fence. The computer is able to quickly focus on lots of different focal points at once. Stack all the points and this produces a cross-section “slice” view of a subject. Then many different math techniques can be used to clean up the image to make it more clear. Then if you take a bunch of different slices by moving the subject through the spinning x-ray beam you can capture lots of slices and then take all the slices to compute a 3D model. Some parts of this are more complicated than it sounds, but other parts are simpler than I may make it sound.

[@noproblem4260]

@@NoahSpurrier Yes, that was called linear tomography, and gave an image of a plane at certain height from the film, by geometrically fixing motion of some pointswith afulcrum fixed point between tube and film... similar to maxilar tomography today...what a surprise, happens that I wrote about the same analogy of computed tomography, about cattle inside a round fence of sticks, but the text was so long that it vanished because of a mistyping...lol

[@pa4tim]

In the Netherlands it is also called rontgen. Great video (like all your videos) Wish it was today possible to find things by experiments on that scale, nowadays you need a whole collider and my garden is not big enough 😁. I work in electronics repair and love experimenting and investigating physic. I teached my self, but I wish I would have been able to study physics.

[@nikokolev9562]

you are great kathy

[@NoahSpurrier]

Probably my favorite physics topic.

[@chopper3lw]

You're so entertaining. Love your videos. The Electricity song makes me cringe and laugh at the same time.

[@neilgreen007]

Major historian here folks. Amazing detail. Thank you!

[@rayoflight62]

Thank you for the detailed historical analysis of the x-rays discovery. Beside the discovery of the electrons in cathode's rays, the biggest advancement was made by Rosalind Franklin using X-ray diffraction for photographing the helical DNA structure (the Nobel went somehow to Watson and Crick). To this day, X-ray spectroscopy is the lead methodology for new, monthly discoveries in the fields of metallurgy, for semiconductor advancements, for the study of astronomical singularities, you tell me more... Highly appreciated, thank you. Anthony from the UK

[@gpwgpw555]

Rosalind Franklin died before she could be nominated for the Nobel.

[@JoeBorrello]

Some of us radiologists don’t like to use the term “x-ray” to refer to a medical image, preferring the term “radiograph” or “roentgenogram”. In fact, if another doctor asks, “Where are my patient’s x-rays?”, the more pedantic of us will say, “Probably somewhere beyond Pluto, but his radiographs are right here.”

[@goodmaro]

"Roentgenogram" for ordinary X-rays has had a revival as a term in distinction from other forms of imaging.

[@stephenirwin2761]

Great job!

[@philblanc7364]

Just subscribed. Good stuff !

[@simonstrandgaard5503]

Great stories

[@brianjohnston9822]

I remember the foot X-ray machines in drugstores. It is a shame that you are done with X-rays, this was one of best videos.

[@h2energynow]

The linke to the old article no longer works. Amazing video thought. thanks Sonya Davidson

[@evellyngabriela1909]

Obrigadaaa!

[@richardfoster2895]

You might add that the unit of radiation is named the Roentgen in his honor.

[@heintmeyer2296]

My mother told me that when she was a young child, her brother would stuff her head into the fluoroscope at the shoe store so he could look at her brain.

[@ethanmckinney203]

Why does this video have less than 10K views? It's nuts.

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

Oh thanks, I think it’s because the thumbnail didn’t hit right.

[@shawnmulberry774]

I had an old relative that told me about using that shoe x-ray machine and of course they just played with it for way too long. I kind of wish we still had those.

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

Shawn Mulberry me too seems really fun. (My mom told me about them)

[@marzymarrz5172]

That’s why they invented publicists.

[@jimimaze]

Why is the next video Julius Simnar? He’s the man. Great video.

[@SimonSozzi7258]

Scheelite! 7:50 I always end up Googling stuff and learning about so many different things. 🙏 "Calcium Tungstate" 🤯 My question; when and how did they figure out UV light and how to produce it themselves. Not exactly relevant here but I know it's a step that happened before this point and I always wonder, how did they know. Something about photographic paper being exposed past the violet...but then how do they produce it?

[@pauleohl]

Ultraviolet light was discovered by Johann Wilhelm Ritter in 1801 when he noticed that invisible light beyond the optical region of the electromagnetic spectrum darkened silver chloride. He split SUNLIGHT using a prism and then measured the relative darkening of the chemical as a function of wavelength. The region just beyond the optical violet region produced the most darkening, and hence was eventually christened ‘ultra’violet.

[@dosomething3]

so many great minds ended up dying broke 😢😢😢😢. terrible 😢😢😢😢

[@peters972]

So if I got it right no one noticed for about 50 years even though they had cathode ray tubes handy. X-rays were hiding in plain sight :-)

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

Exactly! Crazy eh?

[@gpwgpw555]

How can you say they are in plain sight when they are invisible to the eye?.

[@noproblem4260]

X-ray are 1% energy, rest is heat in todays high efficiency and hi voltage (100 KV) modern tubes with tungsten anodes, imagine then producing x rays by hitting the glass of the tube or a thin metal without a concentrated beam on a focal spot of 1 by 1 mm. in those days voltages of 50 KV were hardly produced because of isolation , then, nude wires where run apart in the air to avoid dangerous sparks.... as always great and amusing info, Kathy

[@peters972]

@@gpwgpw555 haha

[@williamsoriano4557]

I have a medallion of w,,c, roentgen1895-1995 any one know its value??many tnx,,,

[@StuMas]

Röntgen is also Turkish for x-ray

[@georgekashuba1656]

Roentgen also wrote a letter to Tesla because he used HT coil to generate X-rays

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

Do you know I heard that too but I can’t seem to find a copy of the letter anywhere to validate it and to see what they said. Do you have a link?

[@SimonSozzi7258]

Maybe partly explains the increasing life expectancy.?. No more X Rays and lead paint, arsenic wallpaper, asbestos insulation...😳🤦‍♂️

[@W4BIN]

X-rays do not develop photographic film, it exposes them. Ron W4BIN

[@fractalnomics]

The background music is so irritating. I'm trying to listen!