Table of the Permeability of Various Substances to Roentgen Rays
1896
Medium
Photogravure, plate No. 5 from "Research on Photography with Röntgen Rays (Versuche über Photographie mittelst der Röntgen’schen Strahlen)"
Dimensions
Image: 23 × 17.8 cm (9 1/16 × 7 1/16 in.); Paper: 25.8 × 20.6 cm (10 3/16 × 8 1/8 in.); Mount: 48.9 × 34.1 cm (19 5/16 × 13 7/16 in.)
Classification
photograph
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
205246
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered x-rays on November 8, 1895, and announced his surprising find in a scientific paper at the end of that year. Within days, newspapers everywhere had picked up the story, and the x-ray's manifold applications to science and society began to be explored. Just a few months later, the Austrian chemists Josef Maria Eder and Eduard Valenta replicated Röntgen's experiments and made improvements to his apparatus, publishing their research in a booklet accompanied by fift...