X-Rays
- Year(s) Officially Discovered: 1895
- Discovery Put Into Action: Most Medical Institutions Had One By The 1900s
- Team/Person Behind The Discovery: Wilhelm Roentgen
A German physicist named Wilhelm Roentgen was working on a cathode ray tube one day in 1895. In spite of the tube being covered, Wilhelm noticed that a nearby fluorescent screen would glow when the tube was on, and when the room itself was dark. He was clearly seeing the rays were somehow lighting up the screen. He tried to block the rays, but most stuff he placed in front of them did not seem to stop anything.
Feeling this was weird, he would place his hand in front of the tube. In doing this, he could see the bones of his hand projected on the screen near him. Roentgen then decided to replace the tube with a photographic plate to catch these images. By doing this, he created the very first X-Rays. This technology was soon used in multiple medical institutions worldwide and would expand in the form of CAT Scans and MRIs later on. Sadly, Wilhelm and others did not realize the radiation harm of X-Rays at the time. Today, thankfully, we do and account for it. In fact, your doctor’s office or hospital will likely have a radiation exposure chart that notes how often you’ve been scanned or x-rayed to keep track of things.