X-rays

crookes tube.jpg

Between 1869–1875, English physicist William Crookes developed the cathode ray tube, also known as a Crookes Tube. His and others’ experiments with the application of high voltages to a partially evacuated glass tube led to the somewhat accidental discovery of x-rays by German physicist and mechanical engineer Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895. For this extraordinary achievement, Röntgen was awarded the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. The x-ray image captured the imagination of avant garde artists in the early twentieth century including László Moholy-Nagy at the Bauhaus. Moholy-Nagy featured x-ray images in his Bauhausbuch, Malerei, Photographie, Film (Painting, Photography, Film, 1925), as evidence of the limitations of our sensory perception and potential for an objective vision through visual augmentation.

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