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Taking the X out of X-Rays ~ 1940 General Electric Company
🕑 Added 2019-11-08 22:06:49 +0000 UTCmore at http://quickfound.net/
Originally a public domain film from the National Archives or Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray
Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
X-rays make up X-radiation, a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz (3×1016 Hz to 3×1019 Hz) and energies in the range 100 eV to 100 keV. X-ray wavelengths are shorter than those of UV rays and typically longer than those of gamma rays. In many languages, X-radiation is referred to as Röntgen radiation, after the German scientist Wilhelm Röntgen, who discovered it on November 8, 1895. He named it X-radiation to signify an unknown type of radiation. Spelling of X-ray(s) in the English language includes the variants x-ray(s), xray(s), and X ray(s)...
On November 8, 1895, German physics professor Wilhelm Röntgen stumbled on X-rays while experimenting with Lenard tubes and Crookes tubes and began studying them. He wrote an initial report "On a new kind of ray: A preliminary communication" and on December 28, 1895 submitted it to Würzburg's Physical-Medical Society journal. This was the first paper written on X-rays. Röntgen referred to the radiation as "X", to indicate that it was an unknown type of radiation. The name stuck...
Röntgen immediately noticed X-rays could have medical applications. Along with his 28 December Physical-Medical Society submission he sent a letter to physicians he knew around Europe (January 1, 1896). News (and the creation of "shadowgrams") spread rapidly with Scottish electrical engineer Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton being the first after Röntgen to create an X-ray (of a hand). Through February there were 46 experimenters taking up the technique in North America alone.
The first use of X-rays under clinical conditions was by John Hall-Edwards in Birmingham, England on 11 January 1896, when he radiographed a needle stuck in the hand of an associate...
With the widespread experimentation with x‑rays after their discovery in 1895 by scientists, physicians, and inventors came many stories of burns, hair loss, and worse in technical journals of the time...
In 1904, John Ambrose Fleming invented the thermionic diode, the first kind of vacuum tube. This used a hot cathode that caused an electric current to flow in a vacuum. This idea was quickly applied to X-ray tubes, and hence heated-cathode X-ray tubes, called "Coolidge tubes", completely replaced the troublesome cold cathode tubes by about 1920.
In about 1906, the physicist Charles Barkla discovered that X-rays could be scattered by gases, and that each element had a characteristic X-ray spectrum. He won the 1917 Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.
In 1912, Max von Laue, Paul Knipping, and Walter Friedrich first observed the diffraction of X-rays by crystals. This discovery, along with the early work of Paul Peter Ewald, William Henry Bragg, and William Lawrence Bragg, gave birth to the field of X-ray crystallography.
The Coolidge X-ray tube was invented during the following year by William D. Coolidge. It made possible the continuous emissions of X-rays. Modern X-ray tubes are based on this design...
Diagnostic X-rays (primarily from CT scans due to the large dose used) increase the risk of developmental problems and cancer in those exposed. X-rays are classified as a carcinogen by both the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer and the U.S. government. It is estimated that 0.4% of current cancers in the United States are due to computed tomography (CT scans) performed in the past and that this may increase to as high as 1.5-2% with 2007 rates of CT usage.
Experimental and epidemiological data currently do not support the proposition that there is a threshold dose of radiation below which there is no increased risk of cancer. However, this is under increasing doubt. It is estimated that the additional radiation from diagnostic X-rays will increase the average person's cumulative risk of getting cancer by age 75 by 0.6–3.0%. The amount of absorbed radiation depends upon the type of X-ray test and the body part involved. CT and fluoroscopy entail higher doses of radiation than do plain X-rays...
