One day in November of 1895, a physics professor named Wilhem Conrad Roentgen was bent over his laboratory table in Wurzburg, Germany. He was investigating cathode-ray fluorescence by passing electricity through tubes filled with rarified gas ,similar to our fluorescent light bulbs Suddenly he noticed a strange glow emanating from a small screen lying nearby on the bale This was not supposed to be part of the experiment.

Fascinated with the new phenomenon , he investigated it day and night for seven weeks He saw the outline of the bones in his hand and then in his wife's hand. Roentgen realized than a previously unknown "invisible light was causing the fluorescence and the resultant image (it turned out to be an electromagnetic wave with a very short wavelength) Because X is used in mathematics to indicate an unknown quantity he called the phenomenon an X-ray.

On December 28, 1895, Roentgen wrote up his findings in the Wursburg Physical Medical Society Journal - and became instantly famous At a January meeting his X-ray was named the Roentgen Ray So enthusiastic was the scientific world over this discovery that more than a thousand articles and over fifty books about the Roentgen Ray were published in that first year, 1896.Within several years two French researchers named Pierre and Marie Curie had isolated radium an element that emits radiation as it decays This gave further impetus to the medical advances that had begum with Roentgen's discovery Equipment was rapidly manufactured and installed in major hospitals; surgeons were especially delighted with its ability to reveal the body's secrets.

Roentgen himself never tried to patent or benefit financially from his discovery.

Boston . with its mixture of science and industry and its many institutions of the higher learning was the city to lead the way in America Two of the earliest American physicists to confirm Roentgen's work Professor Amos Dolberg and Professor John Trowbridge, were both centered in Boston, as were many other pioneers At first, X-rays of patients were performed in the physics labs of MIT; but when the first year of Roentgenology had ended, the City of Boston boasted five X-ray machines being used for medical purposes