History of radiology

Working in a darkened laboratory in Würzburg in Germany in 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen noticed that a screen painted with a fluorescent material in the same room, but a couple of feet away from a cathode ray tube he had energized and made lightproof, started to fluoresce.

Röntgen recognized that the screen was responding to the nearby production of unknown rays transmitted invisibly through the room which he called “X-rays”. Radiographic images began to be created, starting as a burst of ionizing radiation and causing a contrast image on a piece of film.

For his discovery, Röntgen was honored with the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901, and the public was fascinated with the ensuing developments and implications. Nevertheless, early radiologists were not concerned about the potential negative effects of X-rays, thus protective measures were not introduced until 1904 after the death of Clarence Dally (the long-time assistant of Thomas Edison in X-ray manufacture and testing).