History of X-rays

Discusses the discovery, development and basic physics of x-ray generation.

[coralspringsanimalhospital]

Dr. Klioze, I'm a licensed X-ray and MRI tech, but I've been in the veterinary field for about 15 years. All my trainees that pass through radiology (which is basically all nurses who get hired here) have the pleasure of watching your video. Very informative and entertaining as well, thank you for taking the time doing this!

[WhoFlungPoo]

Well, I'll be darned! After almost 72 years, I finally know what that motor sound is when I received X-Rays (having never had the courage to ask the X-Ray Tech). Watched the whole video and loved the history and the theory. Oh, and BTW. I remember the thrill of the foot X-Ray machine at Florsheim in the 50's and OKC. But now I wonder about its latent effects. Thanks for a great lesson!

[ArifGhostwriter]

[From the UK, March 2023] This has to be one of the most fantastic explainer & history of the X-ray videos out there. 👍🏽👍🏽

[HansLiu]

Thanks for uploading. Undergrad engineers could also benefit from watching this

[mikefixac]

Dr. Klioze, how thoroughly I enjoyed this video. Thank you. What amazes me is how quickly his discovery spread around the world. It wasn't till the 80s the cause of peptic ulcers was a bacterium, not stress. The medical community tried to disregard the doctor who discovered this.
Today I believe knowledge of something even more simple and basic is readily available but it's disregarded by both the medical community and the lay public. I won't say what it is, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out in the future. Again, thank you for this.

[lutzweb]

One of the BEST science educational video ever seen!!

[jimaanders]

I remember the x-ray machines in shoe stores back around 1950. They were really fascinating for a kid.
During the early days of x-ray development there were terrible cases of overexposure.
I heard that Thomas Edison refused to have an x-ray of himself because he knew a man who had been badly injured by overexposure.

[tsparker]

I enjoyed your video.

I have been designing X-ray tubes for over 20 years, everything from a 0.5 watt tube which is on the Perseverance Rover, to a 110 Kilowatt tube designed for cardiac stop motion studies. I would like to make one correction to your understanding of the X-ray physics. The angled target has a negligible effect on the production or direction of the X-rays created. The electrons interact with the anode material and the photons are generated essentially in a spherical globe of emission. Those emitted in the direction of the anode structure are mostly absorbed in the anode or target as we call them. The other hemisphere of emission leaves the surface in all directions and must be shielded except for the photons which are useful in the direction of the object you wish to illuminate. The beam is trimmed or collimated as needed so as to only allow the useful photons to escape the tube housing. The reason the target (anode) is angled goes back to your discussion of the erosion of the target by heating of the anode material. The heat generated during high power exposures is sufficient to melt any metal. When done on purpose, this is used for electron welding. In X-ray tubes we do not want to melt the anode, but we also want a small point source for the X-rays to improve the image quality. We cannot have a point source, because it would melt the anode, so we compromise and make a narrow long focal spot on a rotating anode to spread the heat over a much larger area, but we place the electron beam on a slanted surface and look at it along the edge. This makes the focal spot looks almost like a point, or at least a very small box when viewed at a shallow angle. So, the rotation and angle are all about spreading the heat out over a large area, so we don't melt the anode.

Perhaps you will make an updated video at some point and you can make the correction then. If not, at least it is in the comments.

[subramaniamchandrasekar]

You could have added the double side coated x-ray film and the luminescent back plate placed below the film that glows for some time after the exposure is stopped. This greatly reduced the exposure time to safe values. Great video. Regards.

[Yousif]

Many thanks Dr. Klioze for this explanation and reach background.

[canvey]

I'm very grateful for this video, as someone that doesn't usually understand these kinds of things it explained tremendously well how everything worked in fine detail.
Thank you so much for this

Chris

England, UK

[TeslaExplorer]

Very well explained. Thank you for this video!

[asporner]

Thank you for posting these videos!  I have watched this video and the CT video and found them most enlightening.  I currently live in Germany and what is interested is that Mr. Röntgen has a verb also in his honor "ge-röntg-t" means to have an X-Ray done.  

[movaxh]

BTW. A first Nobel Prize in Physic was received by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1901, for his research on X-rays. Also, Röntgen also studing and finished his PhD at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He also met his wife here. I live just 30 seconds from a street named after him, Röntgenstrasse, close to Limmatplatz, Zurich, and a Röntgenplatz (converted from X intersection in 1984, which was due to a local population opposition to make it a high traffic road, and the opposition was named X-ray square festival :D), which I visit daily because it is so close to my favorite coffee shop and grocery shop. Unfortunately I don't know if he lived in some apartment / house close by, but it is a possibility. But not entire, as I think the region was mostly industrial in nature at the time, and had some railroad there.

[Chadwickyboy]

That radiograph of the foot is more interesting than let on. That is the "shadowgraph" Nikola Tesla sent to Wilhelm Roentgen shortly after he went public with the xray discovery in 1896. Tesla had been pursuing and experimenting with xrays at the same time, but had developed it far enough to impress even Roentgen.

[mj]

Wonderful job. As a retired radiologist I thought you did a great job. I would love to see more videos of the fantastic devices over the course of years. The best example that comes to mind are the complex motion tomography units in the 70s and 80s, such as the Phillips Polytome and CGR tomography units. They were the epitome of mechanical engineering marvels.

[srideepprasad]

Well presented - and well researched. Thanks for sharing.

[passedhighschoolphysics]

Nice video. The book, "Naked to the Bone" goes into a lot more detail.
Hard to believe we once X-Rayed pregnant women to see the pelvic bones. The exposure time was typically 8 hours.
No mention of The Beatles? They had so much money they funded the development CAT scanners.

[Sixalienasa]

I read in Röentgen's Biography that he first noticed in a closed drawer fotographic paper or plate that had been exposed. He wondered why, and finally discovered that it was the X-ray that were responsible for it.

[drsameerparmar]

Dear Doctor Klioze,
Excellent efforts and amazing movie. Today my concept of ho Kv and mAs works is clear.