How were X-rays discovered?
Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays by accident while experimenting with vacuum tubes.
In 1895, Röntgen noticed a glowing screen in his dark lab despite his equipment being shielded. He realized a new form of radiation was passing through solid objects. He named them 'X-rays' because their nature was unknown, a discovery that revolutionized medicine by allowing doctors to see inside the body without surgery.
Nerd Mode
On November 8, 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was investigating the external effects of various types of vacuum tube equipment at the University of Würzburg. He was specifically using a Crookes-Hittorf tube, which he had covered in heavy black cardboard to prevent light from escaping. Despite this thick covering, he noticed that a screen coated with barium platinocyanide located several feet away began to glow with a fluorescent light.Röntgen performed several experiments over the following weeks to understand this phenomenon. He discovered that these invisible rays could pass through human flesh but were blocked by denser materials like bone or lead. To prove his findings, he captured the first ever X-ray image on December 22, 1895, which showed the skeletal structure of his wife Anna Bertha's hand and her wedding ring. Upon seeing the image, she famously exclaimed, 'I have seen my death.'He published his results in a paper titled 'On a New Kind of Rays' on December 28, 1895. Because the nature of the radiation was a mystery at the time, he used the mathematical symbol 'X' for the unknown to name them. His groundbreaking work earned him the very first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. Today, X-rays are a fundamental tool in medical diagnostics, security scanning, and material science.
Verified Fact
FP-0008919 · Feb 20, 2026