X-RAY VISION: On this day in 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen (1845-1923), a mechanical engineer and physicist, published “On a New Kind of Rays.” His Röntgen rays (X-rays) allowed doctors to see things that previously were hidden, changing the way medical conditions are detected and diagnosed forever.

For weeks prior to the publication, he had been working feverishly in his lab. The first “X-ray” of a human body part was of his wife Anna’s hand. When she saw the macabre image, she is said to have shuddered, “I have seen my death!” (No worries.  She lived another 24 years before dying in 1919 at the age of 80.)

Experimenting with X-rays became fashionable in the years immediately after Röntgen’s discovery. It took a while before it became clear X-rays could be lethal. One of Thomas Edison’s assistants, Clarence Dally, was an early casualty. In the long run, of course, X-rays have extended far more lives than they have shortened.

Röntgen received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery.