"Professor Rontgen's Wonderful Discovery"

**X-Ray Incunabula, 25 January 1896 ** The article, "Professor Rontgen's Wonderful Discovery" appears as a short paragraph in the Scientific American of 25 January 1896 (vol 84 no. 4 pp 49-64 with the Rontgen on pg 50) issue. The short article is one of the earliest appearances in the USA of Rontgen's remarkable/epochal discovery of the x-ray. Rontgen's original article appeared 28 December 1895 in Wurzberg and it was remarkable for the time that news of the discovery made it into print so very quickly in the USA. It seems that the first announcement no matter how truncated appeared in print in the New York "Sun" newspaper on 7 January 1896. The first scientific appraisal and explanation of the discovery came slightly late in an article by Edwin B. Frost in the journal "Science". This quote is from 25 January 1896 (when few details were yet available): "Professor Rontgen's Wonderful Discovery." "There have been received from Europe by cable very insufficient accounts of a discovery attributed to Professor Rontgen, of Wurzburg University. By the use of a radiant state of matter tube, a Crookes tube, it is stated that he has succeeded in obtaining photographic effects through opaque objects. It has long been known that ether waves of long period would pass through matter opaque to short waves, and that such a screen as is afforded by a plate of blackened rock salt will sift out short waves, while long waves pass through it. In some unexplained way Professor Rontgen, it is claimed, has succeeded in affecting the sensitive plate with waves which had passed through an opaque body. Metals cutting off all rays alike would produce a shadow, so that a metallic object in a box or embedded in the human system could be made to give some kind of an image. The operations are said to have been conducted without a lens, entirely by shadow.".