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Thomas J. McCormack, "The New X-Rays in Photography", in a bound volume of The Open Court, a Weekly Journal Devoted to the Religion of Science, February 6, 1896, no. 441, volume x-6, pp 4799-4801. With a very large photographic image (12x9.25" 31x24cm). Also appearing in this volume: _____. "Roentgen's Rays Again", no. 446 vol X-11, March 12, 1896, pp 4483-4844, illustrated with a double-page photographic image.__+__ This is offered in the full bound volume of pp 4759-5174. Bound in modern black cloth with a call number gilt stamped on spine bottom. Each weekly section title has a small rubber stamp from the former library. PROVENANCE: interesting Federal history of ownership on this volume, belonging to the Bureau of American Ethnology, the Smithsonian Institution, and then dispensed by the Library of Congress (with their surplus stamp on the front free endpaper). Also, the major issue is a little bit of damage to the text on the first page of text of the first x-ray paper; also, there is some scuffing to the photo plate of the x-ray, removing a 10x10mm section from the face of the background, which is really a shame. In any event, the price for this item takes this bits into account. __+__ This is a very early appearance in the U.S. of the weeks-old Roentgen discovery of the x-ray. The first journal edition in English appears to be 23 January 1896 in Nature (vol 53), and the first in a U.S. journal in Science on 31 January, though that is not illustrated. (The Science article, written by Hugo Munsterberg of Harvard, notes that this was a good thing for the reassurance of German stature in physics as they had in the last year lost Kundt, Hertz, and von Helmholtz, but n The illustrated article by McCormack, in the Taoist-historico-scientific journal Open Court, shares an example of x-ray photography by H(ermann). Schubert (1848-1911, and who would have his paper on the Rontgen rays translated for the Monist in April) of the Physical Laboratory in Hamburg which is very large, more than 12" tall, and by far the largest of these famous photos that I have seen. There is a short discussion on what exactly to call the "photograph", since it really wasn't a photo by general standards, and the term "x-ed" is suggested.I'm not sure when the "X-Ray" as a term for the product of being exposed to x-rays and photographic film was, but it wasn't long after this.) There is a bit of history of the discovery of the x-ray, and a discussion on the idea of chance and discovery in scientific progress. __+__ There would be an enormous wave of publications on the x-ray over the course of the next year--in fact, the Bibliography of X-ray Literature and Research (1896-1897) by Charles Phillips (published in 1906) is 68pp long and finds more than 1500 books and articles published over just two years. Oddly, the Open Court papers are not to be found in the Phillips bibliography, and I'm not sure why. __+__ It seems to me that Open Court publishes on the of the first photographs of an x-ray in a U.S. journal. McCormack (1865-1932) had an interesting career, translating Lagrange, Weismann, Mach, as well as the photographer and mathematician Hermann Schubert's books on recreational mathematics), and wrote several books in disparate disciplines. ow they had Wilhelm Roentgen to take their places in living greatness.)__+__.
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