Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert lamp and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and I gotta start you off with
Speaker 1: a pop quiz today. Robert, Actually, no, this isn't a
Speaker 1: pop quiz. Let's not pretend because you already know the
Speaker 1: answer to this, It's in the notes. But here's the question.
Speaker 1: Would you have known the answer if you didn't do
Speaker 1: the research for this episode? The question is do you
Speaker 1: know who was the very first person ever to receive
Speaker 1: a Nobel Prize in physics? I would not have known
Speaker 1: prior to recording this, not off the top of my
Speaker 1: head either. No, I wouldn't have been able to come
Speaker 1: up with a name. So the very first Nobel Prize
Speaker 1: in Physics recipient is a German physicist by the name
Speaker 1: of Wilhelm Konrad Rundkin. And in the words of the
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize organization, he got the prize quote in recognition
Speaker 1: of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery
Speaker 1: of the remarkable rays subsequently named after him. So raise
Speaker 1: named after him one of these Wilhelm rays. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't call him that. No, No, these were the Runtkin rays.
Speaker 1: And sure enough, if you go back into the eight
Speaker 1: ten nineties, and look at the journals of the time.
Speaker 1: You can find like articles in the journal Nature by
Speaker 1: no less than J. J. Thompson, the guy who's credited
Speaker 1: with the discovery of the electron, comparing Runtkin rays with
Speaker 1: the radiation emitted by uranium salts. But most people, probably
Speaker 1: today do not know what Runtkin rays are because we
Speaker 1: call them by a different name. We call them X rays,
Speaker 1: and that is going to be the topic for today.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about X rays. Now. Of course,
Speaker 1: this is a show about invention, and before you get
Speaker 1: out all your well, actually's it's quite true that X
Speaker 1: rays were never at any point invented. They are not
Speaker 1: a human invention. They are part of nature. In fact,
Speaker 1: X rays are no more human invention than visible light
Speaker 1: is than though what makes X rays special is that
Speaker 1: while we've long had the ability to produce copious amount
Speaker 1: of visible light, it's only since around the beginning of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, a little bit before the beginning of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, that we understood how to produce and
Speaker 1: control X rays. And it's this power, the power of
Speaker 1: the X ray machine that we're looking at today and
Speaker 1: That's one of the wonderful things though about this episode,
Speaker 1: is that this is a case where we can point
Speaker 1: to one individual, one scientist, one physicist, and and identify
Speaker 1: their key role in this turning point in history. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of inventions are are kind of murkier, right,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of things that we think of as
Speaker 1: inventions are actually just like slight modifications of something that
Speaker 1: came before. H This is a case where there really
Speaker 1: was a tremendous, sudden breakthrough and it had far reaching
Speaker 1: effects all over the world. Just try to imagine the
Speaker 1: time before X rays, Before say X rays in a
Speaker 1: diagnostic medical context. We now know X rays are useful
Speaker 1: for a lot more than just medicine. But just think
Speaker 1: about going to the doctor and maybe having something wrong
Speaker 1: inside you at a time when there were no X rays. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This reminds me of the old saying um about how
Speaker 1: a book is man's best friend outside of a dog
Speaker 1: or was that because inside of a dog is too
Speaker 1: dark to see? Yeah, but it is. It is dark
Speaker 1: inside the body, and it was it was truly dark
Speaker 1: and in many other ways before the X ray, Because
Speaker 1: before X rays, the best way to peer inside the
Speaker 1: living body. It was to look through a natural aperture
Speaker 1: using what you would call the old knifeoscope. Yeah. Basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if you didn't have a natural aperture to
Speaker 1: look into, you would have to make one, You'd have
Speaker 1: to cut one. And it's I think it was really
Speaker 1: difficult to overstate the importance of this bit of medical technology,
Speaker 1: the ability to see how bones and tissues are aligned,
Speaker 1: to see what might be wrong with them, what's broken,
Speaker 1: how are they healing. But to use a very basic
Speaker 1: example that comes up a lot discussing the X ray
Speaker 1: and the advent of x ray technology is, Uh, you
Speaker 1: have an individual who is say shot with a with
Speaker 1: a by a gun. A bullet enters their body. Now,
Speaker 1: sometimes the bullet exits the body, but other times it
Speaker 1: does not. How do you find the bullet? Well, today
Speaker 1: we can x ray, somebody find the foreign map matter
Speaker 1: and you know, hone in on where we need to
Speaker 1: remove it from. But prior to this, one might have
Speaker 1: to do a bit of searching and sometimes the bullet
Speaker 1: couldn't be found at all, which can have dire results.
Speaker 1: In one for instance, a US President James Garfield was
Speaker 1: shot and subsequently died in large part because they could
Speaker 1: not find the bullet. That story is actually weird and
Speaker 1: worth reading about in depth if you ever get a chance.
Speaker 1: The the assassin was a guy named Charles Julius Gatteaux.
Speaker 1: Who he was, this dude who thought that he had
Speaker 1: helped James Garfield get elected, and so he thought that
Speaker 1: God was telling him that he had like a special
Speaker 1: appointment coming to him, like that he deserved a console
Speaker 1: ship or something, and he ended up shooting James Garfield.
Speaker 1: But it's often been said that Garfield's death was not
Speaker 1: caused directly by the assassin's bullet, but by the failures
Speaker 1: of medicine at the time, because he didn't die until
Speaker 1: eleven weeks after he was shot, and not only could
Speaker 1: the doctors not find the bullet inside him, they had
Speaker 1: to keep digging around looking for it with like the
Speaker 1: unsterilized equipment and dirty hands of the time, probably leading
Speaker 1: to the infections of the wound which ended up killing him. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't want to imply that the X ray,
Speaker 1: of course, is our only way of understanding what's going
Speaker 1: on inside the body or diagnosing illnesses, but it is
Speaker 1: tremendously important, and that was one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: X rays are taken so often. That is why I
Speaker 1: venture to say everyone listening to this podcast has received
Speaker 1: an X ray in their life. I'm sure you've received
Speaker 1: multiple X rays. I would be I would be shocked
Speaker 1: if there was anyone out there who has never received
Speaker 1: an X ray. And you should be thankful that X
Speaker 1: rays are so much safer today than they were when
Speaker 1: they were first invented. But even when, even back at
Speaker 1: that time, when they were dangerous, they could be a
Speaker 1: life saving intervention. Um so a bit more, I guess
Speaker 1: on Mr Runchkins So. He was born in Prussia now
Speaker 1: Germany March five. He died in February of nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: three in Munich. And in the mid eighteen nineties, Runtgan
Speaker 1: was working as a professor of physics at Wurzburg University
Speaker 1: in Bavaria, and around this time, the behavior of discharge
Speaker 1: known as cathode rays was extremely hot stuff in science.
Speaker 1: Lots of physics researchers around the world that they were
Speaker 1: pushing the limits of science working with cathode ray tube experiments.
Speaker 1: So what's a cathode ray tube? Here's the simple version.
Speaker 1: You get an enclosed glass tube and use a vacuum
Speaker 1: to suck most of the air out of it. You
Speaker 1: want to try to create like a partial vacuum, a
Speaker 1: rarefied gas environment inside the tube. And then inside this tube,
Speaker 1: you have two metal electrodes known as a cathode and
Speaker 1: an anode, And imagine you connect those two electrodes separately
Speaker 1: to the terminals of a battery. The cathode is connected
Speaker 1: to the negative terminal. The anode is connected to the
Speaker 1: positive terminal. Now, obviously the current wants to flow, right,
Speaker 1: it wants to flow from the negative to the positive.
Speaker 1: And if you apply a great enough voltage to this tube,
Speaker 1: you will actually begin to see the tube glow as
Speaker 1: a result of electrons flying off of the cathode and
Speaker 1: jumping to the anode, jumping across the gap. And so
Speaker 1: different forms of the anode can create different effects. Like
Speaker 1: if you use an anode that's the receptive terminal with
Speaker 1: a hole in the middle, so it's kind of a
Speaker 1: ring that's attracting these electrons, you can essentially create a
Speaker 1: kind of beam of electrons that flows through the anode
Speaker 1: and projects against the inside wall of the tube on
Speaker 1: the far side. And if you use an anode in
Speaker 1: a particular shape. You can kind of cast a shadow
Speaker 1: in that shape of the two against the back of
Speaker 1: the two wall, surrounded by the glow of the streaming
Speaker 1: electron flow. Now, of course, at the time, physicists did
Speaker 1: not know what was happening in the tube right. The
Speaker 1: electron was not even formally discovered until when the physicist J. J.
Speaker 1: Thompson used Catherine Cathode ray tube experiments to prove the
Speaker 1: existence of this tiny sub atomic particle with a negative charge,
Speaker 1: which we would later come to call the electron. In
Speaker 1: the years before this, there was still a lot of mystery,
Speaker 1: what's happening, what's causing this glow? So a little bit
Speaker 1: earlier in the eighteen nineties, Wilhelm Rundkin was performing experiments
Speaker 1: with Cathode ray tubes. Specifically, it was on one day
Speaker 1: in November of eight that he was doing experiments on
Speaker 1: a kind of tube called a Crooks tube, named after
Speaker 1: the English physicist William Crooks, and while performing experiments with
Speaker 1: the tube in a completely darkened room, Rundkin noticed out
Speaker 1: of the corner of his eye that a screen of
Speaker 1: barium platinum cyanide in the room with him began to glow.
Speaker 1: When the cathode ray was powered up. Now, this barium
Speaker 1: platinum cyanide, this is a material that was used in
Speaker 1: photographic plates that we now know fluoresces. It glows in
Speaker 1: the presence of ionizing radiation like X rays and gamma rays,
Speaker 1: and so in this dark room it was glowing. He
Speaker 1: found that the screen was being excited by some kind
Speaker 1: of energy that was emitted from the tube every time
Speaker 1: he turned it on, and the screen glowed as if
Speaker 1: it were being illuminated by light. But whatever caused it
Speaker 1: to glow was completely invisible to the naked eye. It
Speaker 1: was as if he had discovered a form of invisible light,
Speaker 1: which sounds pretty freaky to the Halloween music, and it
Speaker 1: it is essential though in understanding what's going on here,
Speaker 1: because they did not understand what this was. No, they
Speaker 1: did not originally understand that this was a higher energy
Speaker 1: form of the same type of radiation that that causes
Speaker 1: visible light. So he was doing experiments trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what was going on here. He immediately started all
Speaker 1: these different tests, like he found that the rays left
Speaker 1: images on photographic plates, so that's one thing you could
Speaker 1: use them to essentially expose a photograph, And he also
Speaker 1: experimented with placing different objects between the tube and the
Speaker 1: photographic plates, and he found that this unknown energy which
Speaker 1: started calling X rays seemed to pass right through some
Speaker 1: objects like wood and paper, while being stopped by others
Speaker 1: that would leave a dark spot on the exposed photographic plate.
Speaker 1: In his most famous experiment, Runt again extended this this
Speaker 1: idea of the variable opacity or transparency of of solid
Speaker 1: matter to his own wife's hand. His wife, Anna Bertha.
Speaker 1: He asked her, he was like, honey, come in, and
Speaker 1: he had her hold her hand over a photographic plate
Speaker 1: while he bombarded it with X rays for about fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: And there's a story not not known for sure, if
Speaker 1: it's true that, upon seeing the X ray of her
Speaker 1: own hand, uh Anna Bertha said, I have seen my death.
Speaker 1: And when you've seen the skeleton, yeah, when you look
Speaker 1: at the image, it's not hard to see why it
Speaker 1: is so spooky. You can see the bones within the
Speaker 1: palm reaching up. I mean it looks like these like
Speaker 1: long ghoulish fingers, because what you're actually seeing is that
Speaker 1: the poem is composed of of long bones that connect
Speaker 1: to the fingers at the knuckles, and so it makes
Speaker 1: the X ray of the hand look like a hand
Speaker 1: with like freakishly long fingers, and then her wedding ring
Speaker 1: is in there, so it's this huge black lump on
Speaker 1: the third finger. Uh, it's it's it's creepy. You know this.
Speaker 1: I can't help but think of the scene and David
Speaker 1: Cronenberg's The Fly where he wants to drag Gina Davis,
Speaker 1: his character, his his his former lover into the telepod
Speaker 1: with him as part of the ongoing experiment. But another
Speaker 1: comparison I want to draw here between fictional mad science
Speaker 1: and real science and real innovation is something we've already
Speaker 1: touched on that he was not acting alone in all
Speaker 1: of this research. There were other people engaging with the
Speaker 1: same sort of technology, uh, sort of reaching after some
Speaker 1: of the same ideas, and he was the first person
Speaker 1: to really put things together. Yeah, so right after he
Speaker 1: discovered this, he immediately pretty much began to publicize his findings.
Speaker 1: It was the same year, and other researchers replicated them.
Speaker 1: So other people did they you know, like, it wasn't
Speaker 1: all that hard to put together the apparatus he had.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like he had some special materials or something.
Speaker 1: He was just like, hey, try this, and people pretty
Speaker 1: easily could and they did, and so another scientist named
Speaker 1: Arthur Schuster soon discovered that X rays were, in fact
Speaker 1: the same type of radiation is visible light, just in
Speaker 1: a much higher energy form, higher frequency, shorter wavelengths. And
Speaker 1: so it's almost like, you know, the the keys to
Speaker 1: discovering the X rays had been lying around. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: like with the fly, though, we just see this one
Speaker 1: vision of this. Uh, this mad sign is working on
Speaker 1: his own as if no one else has has really
Speaker 1: any access to the same ideas or technology, when in
Speaker 1: reality they would probably be like six other additional films
Speaker 1: in which someone did not successfully teleport themselves or did
Speaker 1: not wind up being turned into a monster, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, I mean, I guess also like the fly, Uh,
Speaker 1: this story has some lessons about informed consent right where
Speaker 1: he I don't think that runtgen meant to cause his
Speaker 1: wife harm, but people at the time did not understand
Speaker 1: that overexposure to X rays would be extremely dangerous, even lethal,
Speaker 1: And so you have the idea here of like of
Speaker 1: runt again inviting his wife into this experiment when she
Speaker 1: didn't really know what the risks were, and he didn't either. Now,
Speaker 1: so we've touched on before. Runtken, is this turning point
Speaker 1: because there's no real reason why someone else couldn't have
Speaker 1: technically made the same discovery sooner uh as As. Then
Speaker 1: this was pointed out in Early History of X rays
Speaker 1: by Alexei Asthmus. First of all, cathode ray tubes and
Speaker 1: fluorescent screens were the only required technology, and they've been
Speaker 1: around for decades. Some researchers had even observed a fluorescence
Speaker 1: in the tubing or fogged photographic plates. But prior to
Speaker 1: the work of German physicist Nobel Prize winner and al
Speaker 1: toly total Nazi um like seriously joined up early and
Speaker 1: despised any non German science, including the quote Jewish fraud
Speaker 1: of relativity um Philip Lennard who lived eighteen sixty two seven.
Speaker 1: Prior to his work, everyone was focused on what was
Speaker 1: going on inside the tube, not the effects of the
Speaker 1: ray outside the tube, and Leonard was the was actually
Speaker 1: the first to do this, and Runkin made the key
Speaker 1: connections using equipment that came from Leonard and others as well,
Speaker 1: including that Nicola tesla oh I didn't know that, but again,
Speaker 1: it's just it's helpful to to look at at a
Speaker 1: key innovation, key discoveries taking place, you know, not in
Speaker 1: a vacuum like that. There is something that that there
Speaker 1: is something kind of storybook special about that, that that
Speaker 1: one person who is the first to make the ultimate
Speaker 1: connection that leads to these new discoveries. Well, there were
Speaker 1: so much going on with physics discoveries around the turn
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, in those decades surrounding it, I mean,
Speaker 1: must have been such an exciting time to be working
Speaker 1: in a field like this. All Right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a break, and when we come back, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk some more about the kind of energy the kind
Speaker 1: of uh innovations that come in the wake of this discopion.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So you remember the story We
Speaker 1: don't know if it's true, but the story that in
Speaker 1: a Bertha will Holm, Rundkin's wife, after she saw the
Speaker 1: X ray of her hand, she said, I have seen
Speaker 1: my death. And that's interesting in multiple ways because it
Speaker 1: sort of unknowingly portends the risks the dangers of X rays.
Speaker 1: But also I think what she would have meant by
Speaker 1: that is that she could see her skeleton, she could
Speaker 1: see inside her own body, and this was something so
Speaker 1: unusual to people at the time, right, I mean, and
Speaker 1: in many cases, essentially what a doctor is able to
Speaker 1: do is take the X ray and say, oh, I
Speaker 1: see your death right here. Um, but we can remove it.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about it, right, I Mean that's not always. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is an over simplification and doesn't apply to all
Speaker 1: medical scenarios, but it again, it does give us this
Speaker 1: phenomenal ability to look inside the body and see in
Speaker 1: some cases things that should not be their conditions that
Speaker 1: should not be there, or the evidence of injury. And
Speaker 1: soon after the discovery of X rays, in fact, very
Speaker 1: soon after, it was almost immediately picked up for medical uses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everything from examining broken bones to as we mentioned, finding
Speaker 1: lost bullets in a body. Now, as with pretty much
Speaker 1: any cutting edge medical technology found at the dawn of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. Uh, you can find a terrific look
Speaker 1: at at at X ray technology in the Steven Soderberg
Speaker 1: medical drama The Nick, which I think I've mentioned on
Speaker 1: this show before. I definitely mentioned on Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your mind before. Uh, there's just a fabulous drama that
Speaker 1: wasn't seen by enough people. In the two seasons that
Speaker 1: it ran highly recommend anyone pick it up because in
Speaker 1: season one, episode six, the hospital at the center of
Speaker 1: this drama they acquire a second hand X ray machine
Speaker 1: and the whole time there's just there's just reckless use
Speaker 1: of X rays in this episode because again we're in
Speaker 1: a period of time where there's all this enthusiasm about
Speaker 1: the about the technology and there's this this just revelation
Speaker 1: about what it can be used for, and at the
Speaker 1: same time, uh, the dangers of the technology are only
Speaker 1: just beginning to be made evident. But in in the
Speaker 1: Nick there's a there's a scene where the salesman UH
Speaker 1: and UH members of the hospital staff are are trying
Speaker 1: it out without any regard for the dangers of radiation exposure.
Speaker 1: There's a scene where the salesman boasts that the machine
Speaker 1: works just fine. He says, quote, my children were taking
Speaker 1: dozens of X rays for the of themselves the other day.
Speaker 1: They had the thing running for hours. That's some dark
Speaker 1: humor it is. It's it's a wonderful show, but it's
Speaker 1: like it's like in Madmen, when you know the kids
Speaker 1: are always playing with like a plastic bag over their
Speaker 1: heads and stuff from the don't care. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of moments like that that the show itself
Speaker 1: is particularly good because it has this minimal electronic score.
Speaker 1: It has this there's a way that they do the
Speaker 1: cinematography that Soderbrook shoots it, you know, in which it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like a period piece it is. It's you know,
Speaker 1: obviously a period said in a historic period, but it's
Speaker 1: displayed bright and almost futuristic because it was a time
Speaker 1: when all these amazing discoveries were being made and all
Speaker 1: of these technologies that are explored in this episode and
Speaker 1: and others were the cutting the bleeding edge of our
Speaker 1: understanding of human physiology but also the physical nature of
Speaker 1: the world. But it's also got this dark, retrospective irony. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why why is it that we love stuff like that?
Speaker 1: I've noticed that's a thing that lots of historical TV
Speaker 1: shows and movies do now and generally audiences tend to love.
Speaker 1: Is that kind of thing like that my kids were
Speaker 1: playing with the X ray machine, or that you know,
Speaker 1: this little girls playing with plastic bag overhead. Like people
Speaker 1: just really love the like, oh, they don't understand the
Speaker 1: danger yet. Well, in a way, I think a show
Speaker 1: like The Nick is kind of reverse science fiction. Like
Speaker 1: science fiction look looks to the future but deals with
Speaker 1: contemporary anxieties about science and technological advancement and the cultural
Speaker 1: response to all of that. And the nick especially looks
Speaker 1: to the past, but I think you can you can
Speaker 1: see ways in which it is also speaking to the
Speaker 1: definitely speaking to the modern viewer. So it is kind
Speaker 1: of a reverse science fiction. Yeah, that's interesting. Um, I
Speaker 1: mean it's interesting in a different way than looking at
Speaker 1: the science fiction of the past, is because we different things.
Speaker 1: Seems significant to us in retrospect then seemed then, I
Speaker 1: guess seemed interesting to them in prospect exactly. Now, certainly
Speaker 1: as we've we've touched on the danger was not recognized yet.
Speaker 1: Rather than radiation, the prevailing idea was that this was
Speaker 1: essentially a type of photography it was being demonstrated with
Speaker 1: the X ray machine, and that the rays involved were
Speaker 1: were more akin to harmless light visible light. Yes, and
Speaker 1: Runkin accepted Leonard's view that the cathode rays were quote
Speaker 1: vibrations of the ether uh and that it was ethereal
Speaker 1: and didn't and you know, therefore did not reflect or refract. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were He suggested longitudinal vibrations of the ether. The ether,
Speaker 1: I guess this was the day of the luminiferous ether, right,
Speaker 1: the idea that there was a substance through which light
Speaker 1: had to propagate, and this was one thing that people
Speaker 1: would often continue to think basically until Einstein. Right. But
Speaker 1: part of Einstein's achievement was showing, like, you don't need
Speaker 1: an ether theory to show how light travels by the way.
Speaker 1: This is another thing it's interesting about Runkin is that
Speaker 1: he himself only published three papers on X rays during
Speaker 1: his life, But again, there were just so many people
Speaker 1: that were just ready to jump in on this research.
Speaker 1: I know one of his papers I was looking at
Speaker 1: an article that talked about how I think it was
Speaker 1: his very last paper on X rays was about how
Speaker 1: to make them visible? And I think it was like
Speaker 1: that they could be perceived directly by the eye at
Speaker 1: a very high intensity or certain circumstances. Interesting, it doesn't
Speaker 1: sound safe, but but again, yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 1: all these other researchers and innovators and inventors that came
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of his initial discovery that really made
Speaker 1: all of this difference. Um. And then there were those
Speaker 1: two that dismissed it as mere novelty, and this is
Speaker 1: actually reflected in that episode of The Nick as well.
Speaker 1: But other people saw its appeal. Dr Henry W. Ktell,
Speaker 1: demonstrator of morbid anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania. It
Speaker 1: sounds like a Hogwarts position, doesn't, But he told The
Speaker 1: New York Times in quote, the surgical imagination can pleasurably
Speaker 1: lose itself and devising endless applications of this wonderful process.
Speaker 1: And that is in contrast to other individuals who thought
Speaker 1: this was a fad, that this was just a you know,
Speaker 1: a side show, and that clearly wasn't going to be
Speaker 1: a major part of medical diagnosis or treatment. Now it can't.
Speaker 1: We were talking at the beginning about how it wasn't
Speaker 1: immediately clear how dangerous it was. But it can't have
Speaker 1: taken too long for people to catch on, right, because
Speaker 1: they would start to see the effects, right. That's and
Speaker 1: and that's was that was driven home in a couple
Speaker 1: of different resources I looked at here for this. The
Speaker 1: dangers apparently became clear too many of these individuals who
Speaker 1: were working with radiation pretty early by seven for instance,
Speaker 1: hair loss and skin burns, were already being reported because
Speaker 1: you have these researchers working without protection, exposing themselves to
Speaker 1: to these rays way too much, and they're beginning to
Speaker 1: notice damage to their own tissues. Yeah, and if you
Speaker 1: if you want to see something really horrible, you can
Speaker 1: look up what X ray burns look like. It is
Speaker 1: a nasty business. Now. Throughout this time, researchers continued to
Speaker 1: weigh in on just what it was. You know, what
Speaker 1: was this this a vorta of vortex in the ether
Speaker 1: that I'm looking at here high frequency light? Of course
Speaker 1: that's the correct answer. Longitudal waves. That was the original idea.
Speaker 1: Transverse impulses of the ether and similar properties were also
Speaker 1: of course observed in uranium. But it was also really
Speaker 1: ultimately going to be a thirty year journey for scientists
Speaker 1: to really gain like a kind of a bedrock understanding
Speaker 1: of what they were dealing with. Another thing that modern
Speaker 1: audiences might not understand is that because if you've had
Speaker 1: an X ray at the dentist recently or something like that,
Speaker 1: it probably did not take all that long. You know,
Speaker 1: they just flash it on and off and there you go. Uh,
Speaker 1: The older X ray machines took a lot longer. Well,
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier a fifteen minute exposure and some of
Speaker 1: the original experiments, uh, and it would require you would
Speaker 1: need even longer periods of time for certain parts of
Speaker 1: the end of the anatomy, such as the head. There's
Speaker 1: another scene in that episode of The Nick where he's
Speaker 1: testing it out on the hospital administrator character and he says,
Speaker 1: what part of your body do you want to see?
Speaker 1: And he said, oh, I want to see my head.
Speaker 1: So he has him hold up the plate and it
Speaker 1: sets up the machine and says, all right, this should
Speaker 1: take about an hour. Yeah, because the head and the
Speaker 1: brain were extremely difficult to image at the time. But
Speaker 1: as we said, there there was a lot of danger
Speaker 1: in the early days of radiation experimentation and usage. UH.
Speaker 1: Dr Walter James Dodd, for instance, who lived eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine through nineteen through nineteen sixteen. He was one of
Speaker 1: the United States first radiologists. He made some very key
Speaker 1: early innovations, but he also suffered numerous radiation burns and
Speaker 1: had to have several appendages amputated, and he eventually died
Speaker 1: of cancer from radiation exposure at the age of fifty three.
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison actually abandoned his own research into X ray
Speaker 1: technology after his assistant, a glassblower by the name of
Speaker 1: Clarence Madison Dally suffered, you know, an identical fate to
Speaker 1: Dodd due to radiation exposure. Yeah, that's something to hammer
Speaker 1: home that, um. I mean a lot of the risk
Speaker 1: at the time was obviously if you were being imaged
Speaker 1: a lot and having a lot of exposure to X
Speaker 1: rays that way, it was risky for you. But it's
Speaker 1: especially risky for the people who were operating the machines
Speaker 1: because they're around them all the time. They're not just
Speaker 1: there when they're being image they're they're all day. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was looking at one source here, early clinical use
Speaker 1: of the X ray by Joel D. Howell, m d,
Speaker 1: pH d, published in and the Transactions of the American
Speaker 1: Clinical and Climatological Association, and the author pointed out the following.
Speaker 1: He says, quote, early X ray users would test to
Speaker 1: see if the tube was putting out an adequate amount
Speaker 1: of X ray by looking for a glow in their
Speaker 1: hand when they put it in front of the beam.
Speaker 1: Method of testing that would soon reveal itself to have
Speaker 1: delaterious consequences. But he also adds that evidence seems to
Speaker 1: indicate that many of them knew way more about the
Speaker 1: dangers than they let on, and that he says that
Speaker 1: there was this zeal uh you know, this really this
Speaker 1: idea that there was a valor and pushing this amazing
Speaker 1: and life saving technology, um, even though there were these
Speaker 1: ever more apparent risks. Oh, I want to talk about
Speaker 1: a very clear example of that in a minute with
Speaker 1: with Marie Curie. Actually, he also points out another thing
Speaker 1: that's very interesting. They says that it's it's very about
Speaker 1: how we we can't quite look at the X ray
Speaker 1: machine in isolation to understand the changes that came about
Speaker 1: because of it. I'm going to read a longer quote
Speaker 1: from that paper, he says, quote, one must study how
Speaker 1: the machine is used with a specific social, political, and
Speaker 1: economic system. The technology to be considered is not only
Speaker 1: a machine, it is also the system within which that
Speaker 1: machine is used. In the case of the X ray machine,
Speaker 1: that would include the organizational structure of the institution, the
Speaker 1: people designated to run the machine, and the forums on
Speaker 1: which such use was recorded. Even though the published medical
Speaker 1: literature would suggest that the case for using X rays
Speaker 1: to diagnose fractured bones was firmly established by nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: it was not a regular part of patient care for
Speaker 1: decades to come. What was required for it to become
Speaker 1: a part of routine patient care included changes in the
Speaker 1: type of person who was running the machine, changes in
Speaker 1: the payment mechanism, and changes in the way that data
Speaker 1: were conceptualized. Yeah. I mean it's introducing a whole new
Speaker 1: paradigm to medical care. Yeah. And again this is just
Speaker 1: another reason that it it's difficult to to overstate, uh,
Speaker 1: the impact of of X ray technology on medicine. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and I want to talk about an example of that
Speaker 1: also in early early twentieth century wartime medicine. So there's
Speaker 1: a fantastic article I read by Timothy J. Jorgenson, who's
Speaker 1: the director of the Health Physics and Radiation Protection Graduate
Speaker 1: program at Georgetown University. And the article is on the Conversation.
Speaker 1: It's called Marie Curry and her X ray vehicles contribution
Speaker 1: to World War One battlefield medicine. And so this is
Speaker 1: a story I actually somehow I had never read about before. Um,
Speaker 1: but this was fascinating. So we all know Marie Cury,
Speaker 1: the Polish born French physicist and chemist and She's best
Speaker 1: known probably for the discovery and isolation of the elements
Speaker 1: radium and polonium, and for her work on radioactivity spontaneous radiation,
Speaker 1: for which she received two different Nobel Prizes in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh three and nineteen eleven. Uh So, Curie was doing
Speaker 1: her work. She was conducting her research in Paris with
Speaker 1: the Radium Institute when World War One broke out in Europe,
Speaker 1: and in one of the early maneuvers of the war
Speaker 1: in nineteen fourteen, German troops clearly had set their sights
Speaker 1: on the city of Paris, on the French capital, and
Speaker 1: they eventually they invaded France through Belgium, and we're trying
Speaker 1: to march towards Paris to take the capital city. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Cury knew that she couldn't continue her research if the
Speaker 1: city was attacked, so she packed up her fly of radium,
Speaker 1: like literally packed it up in a leadlined case and
Speaker 1: fled to the southwest towards Bordeaux, which I think is
Speaker 1: also where the French government were moved to. But she
Speaker 1: went to Bordeaux and she hid her radium in a
Speaker 1: safe deposit box in a bank vault. Yeah, but having
Speaker 1: safely stored France's supply of radium her radioactive treasures. She
Speaker 1: did not just continue to flee the war. Instead, Curie
Speaker 1: was determined to help with the war effort and defend
Speaker 1: France against the German assault. But she couldn't, of course,
Speaker 1: pick up a rifle and go to the front lines.
Speaker 1: But she had another idea. Instead, she used her knowledge
Speaker 1: about physics and radiation to create an invention that would
Speaker 1: go on to save the lives of thousands of injured
Speaker 1: French and Allied soldiers on the front lines. And this
Speaker 1: would all be with the help of X rays. So,
Speaker 1: by the time of World War One, X rays were
Speaker 1: known to be a life saving medical technology. Like we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, they were useful for diagnosing internal injuries.
Speaker 1: But you had the big, clunky X ray machines of
Speaker 1: the day that were usually cooped up in the high
Speaker 1: tech urban hospitals. Right, So if a French soldier was
Speaker 1: filled with bullets or shrapnel along the front, these hospitals
Speaker 1: would have been many miles away. You can't like take
Speaker 1: the soldier all the way back to the hospital. A
Speaker 1: lot of times they'll often die on the way to
Speaker 1: take a long time to get there. Um, so what
Speaker 1: do you do? How do you bring the life saving
Speaker 1: power of X rays to the injured fighters on the front.
Speaker 1: So Marie Curry's invention was the radiological car. It's a
Speaker 1: car on the bottom, but outfitted with a compartment containing
Speaker 1: an X ray machine and a dynamo to generate the
Speaker 1: electricity to power it, as well as dark room equipment
Speaker 1: for the development of radiological photographs. And these radiological cars
Speaker 1: were nicknamed by the soldiers petite curies, and Curry oversaw
Speaker 1: the creation of the first car, which was used to
Speaker 1: treat wounded soldiers at the Battle of Marne later in
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen, a battle which the Allies won. But obviously
Speaker 1: one car was not enough to put a serious dint
Speaker 1: in this problem, so Cury herself petition donations of cars
Speaker 1: from rich French women to be turned into petite curies,
Speaker 1: and with the help of her daughter Irene, Currie trained
Speaker 1: female volunteers to operate the X ray machines on the
Speaker 1: front lines, and by the end of the war they
Speaker 1: had trained a hundred and fifty women as front line radiographers.
Speaker 1: Now Currie also oversaw the creation of more fixed facilities
Speaker 1: like X ray diagnostic stations at field hospitals behind the
Speaker 1: front and drove and she actually drove and operated a
Speaker 1: radiological car for the war effort herself. Of course, repeated
Speaker 1: exposure to X rays which Curry and her technicians experienced
Speaker 1: come that comes with a lot of associated health risks,
Speaker 1: like we've been talking about. And Currie understood this, like
Speaker 1: she knew that she was putting herself and her health
Speaker 1: and her life at risk by exposing herself to these
Speaker 1: X rays. But I think she saw it as part
Speaker 1: of the risk of aiding in the war effort, just
Speaker 1: like a soldier would put his life on the line
Speaker 1: going out over the trenches. And actually later in her
Speaker 1: life when he suffered from a plastic anemia, which can
Speaker 1: of course result from radiation exposure, some people thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it was her experiments with radium and stuff that
Speaker 1: caused that condition, but Curie actually believed it was her
Speaker 1: repeated exposure to X rays during the war that were
Speaker 1: more likely to have caused the condition. And all told,
Speaker 1: it's been estimated that Curi's efforts contributed to more than
Speaker 1: a million wounded soldiers receiving X rays during the war,
Speaker 1: a huge fraction of which likely had their lives saved.
Speaker 1: By the procedure. It is interesting in retrospected, you know,
Speaker 1: to see how this technology came online in time, just
Speaker 1: in time for the two World Wars, times of such
Speaker 1: injury and loss of life. Yeah, I mean often when
Speaker 1: you think about the nightmare of the First World War
Speaker 1: in particular, it seems like it's a time of such
Speaker 1: terrifying chaos and confusion, largely brought about by new technology, right,
Speaker 1: new warfare technology. Uh, that it was almost like an
Speaker 1: experimental labor to worry for ways to kill and harm
Speaker 1: one another. And so it's kind of interesting also seeing
Speaker 1: going on in the background at being a laboratory of
Speaker 1: ways to save lives. Indeed. All right, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to take another break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss the legacy of the X ray.
Speaker 1: So X ray has changed the world in other ways,
Speaker 1: as Richard Gunderman, Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy
Speaker 1: at Indiana University, pointed out in an article that he
Speaker 1: wrote for The Conversation, UH, this discovery of X ray
Speaker 1: and the advent of X ray technology led to X
Speaker 1: ray crystallography, which allows us to see the world at
Speaker 1: a very small scale. To image molecules, and in fact,
Speaker 1: the father son team of William H. And William L.
Speaker 1: Bragg shared in the nineteen fifteen Nobel Prize in Physics
Speaker 1: for this advancement, and without it, James Watson and Francis
Speaker 1: Crick wouldn't have been able to discover the chemical structure
Speaker 1: of DNA. Oh Yeah, and always got a shout out
Speaker 1: Franklin and Wilkins as well. Now, additionally, X ray astronomy
Speaker 1: allowed us to understand the greater cosmos. Yeah, and X
Speaker 1: ray astronomy is an interesting case. It's worth putting in
Speaker 1: the context to the broader ecosystem of technology like astronomy
Speaker 1: saw such an explosion of new techniques after the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties once we could put observatories in space, and this
Speaker 1: is largely because Earth's atmosphere blocks many kinds of radiation
Speaker 1: that we now use to image the universe. And this
Speaker 1: obviously is a very good thing, right. The atmosphere lets
Speaker 1: most visible light through while stopping a lot of ionizing
Speaker 1: radiation from space like X rays, and by adding space
Speaker 1: based telescopes that could see other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum,
Speaker 1: not just visible light, we greatly expanded astronomical capabilities. For example,
Speaker 1: X ray astronomy in particular has helped us detect and
Speaker 1: understand some of the most extreme and energetic objects in
Speaker 1: the universe, like it played a role in the detection
Speaker 1: and understanding of neutron on stars and black holes. Like
Speaker 1: we often detect black holes from the X rays them,
Speaker 1: not necessarily from the body itself, but when a black
Speaker 1: hole has material spiraling into it, it spews jets of
Speaker 1: X rays out into space as the black hole superheats
Speaker 1: the gases that are swirling into it. Not on a
Speaker 1: much smaller scale. Um Gunderman doesn't mention this in his article,
Speaker 1: but airport security X rays, no matter how much they
Speaker 1: make irritatus, that they do help keep commercial flights safe
Speaker 1: in this day and age. Can you imagine if they
Speaker 1: couldn't X ray your bags and they had to like
Speaker 1: open up everybody's bag and look through it, or just
Speaker 1: like just looking in eyes and just it's just like
Speaker 1: a trust system or gosh, yeah, you can just imagine
Speaker 1: all the myrroad complications that would arise from not being
Speaker 1: able to perform that scan. Yeah, I'm gonna say I'm
Speaker 1: open to being argued otherwise, but as annoying as airport
Speaker 1: security is, it would be infinitely worse and infinitely more
Speaker 1: annoying without X rays. But it's it's kind of like said,
Speaker 1: this is part of the broader ecosystem of the technology.
Speaker 1: And of course there were also additional changes in the
Speaker 1: way we used X rays for medical purposes. Uh, not
Speaker 1: only to find bullets in boken broken bones, but you know,
Speaker 1: spot pneumonia's swallowed objects, cavities, and even cancer. And then
Speaker 1: you get more advanced versions of X ray scans that
Speaker 1: became possible, uh, CT scans, for instance, being X ray
Speaker 1: X rays through the body at different angles to create
Speaker 1: a superior image. Yeah, and people who are outside the
Speaker 1: medical professions might not realize how absolutely essential CT scans
Speaker 1: are these days, like how how frequently they're used and
Speaker 1: how many lives they save. Gunderman points to a study
Speaker 1: in the journal Radiology that looked into the use of
Speaker 1: CT scans in the emergency department of hospitals, and the
Speaker 1: authors they're just wanted to see how often a CT
Speaker 1: scan changes the doctor's primary diagnosis of a patient. Right,
Speaker 1: doctor sees you, examines you externally, they think one thing,
Speaker 1: so they order us CT scan. How often does the
Speaker 1: CT scan change what they think is wrong with you?
Speaker 1: And the study found, quote, the leading diagnosis changed in
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty five of four hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: patients with abdominal pain, and that's about fifty one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty three of three and eighty seven with chest
Speaker 1: pain and or dispania, which is difficulty breathing, and that's
Speaker 1: forty two and a hundred and three out of four
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty three with headache, which is so we
Speaker 1: can't compare this directly with the time before CT scans,
Speaker 1: because it's just it's kind of apples and oranges. But
Speaker 1: if you take it as a very rough estimate, just
Speaker 1: think about what it means that CT scans change what
Speaker 1: a doctor thinks is wrong with you fifty one percent
Speaker 1: or forty two percent of the time, and then think
Speaker 1: about what that meant before we had these technologies. Right,
Speaker 1: Just imagine going to the doctor with chess pain or
Speaker 1: trouble breathing in the eighteen hundreds, before there is any
Speaker 1: any of this kind of internal imaging, when even doctors
Speaker 1: today change their primary diagnosis about forty two percent of
Speaker 1: the time after looking at a CT scan, Gunderman writes, quote,
Speaker 1: Thanks to CTS wide availability and great speed, doctors can
Speaker 1: determine within minutes whether or not a patient's abdominal pain
Speaker 1: is due to impendicitis, chest pain reflects a tear in
Speaker 1: the order, or a severe headache is due to the
Speaker 1: rupture of a blood vessel in the brain. It is
Speaker 1: no wonder that about eighty million CT scans are performed
Speaker 1: each year in the US. And it also turned out
Speaker 1: that the same radiation that could detect cancer could also
Speaker 1: destroy it. Radiotherapy. Yeah, radiation oncology has its roots actually
Speaker 1: in the years immediately following Ruigan's discovery, when doctors discovered
Speaker 1: this peculiar power. Now and to be sure, X rays
Speaker 1: were used to treat a lot of illnesses before its
Speaker 1: dangers were discovered. Um again, you just have to think
Speaker 1: to this, the zealous use of radiation and just the
Speaker 1: idea that this new technology could do just about anything.
Speaker 1: But looking broadly at these and the zeroing in on
Speaker 1: on some of the treatment details. X rays to treat
Speaker 1: cancer may have occurred as early as eighteen, which, if
Speaker 1: you'll recall from earlier, that's the year right after Runkin
Speaker 1: discovered X rays and it was like at the end
Speaker 1: of eighteen that he discovered them. Now I want I
Speaker 1: want to stress though used in an attempt to treat
Speaker 1: this was This was certainly extremely early days. Now. One
Speaker 1: thing that's interesting and worth noting is that Runkin actually
Speaker 1: did not seek riches from his discovery, like he did
Speaker 1: not file for a patent on the production of X
Speaker 1: rays through his method UH, and he even donated the
Speaker 1: cash component of his Nobel prize to the university worked for.
Speaker 1: He believed that scientific discoveries like X rays that were
Speaker 1: useful in helping people in medicine were the common property
Speaker 1: of humankind, not something to be claimed and profited on
Speaker 1: by one man. And that's kind of a refreshing change,
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, Now, torek up Runkin discovered X rays.
Speaker 1: In the following year, Antoine Becquerel identified radio activity, and
Speaker 1: by nineteen hundred, alpha, beta, and gamma rays had been discovered.
Speaker 1: And as James Burke UH, the author and UH television
Speaker 1: host explored, in the day of the universe changed, even
Speaker 1: more types of radiation were expected, even more discoveries surely
Speaker 1: seemed to be just around the bend. And then in
Speaker 1: nineteen O three Burke rights. Uh. The physicist Renee blonde
Speaker 1: Lott reported the discovery of a new type of ray,
Speaker 1: the N ray, and he observed them while looking at
Speaker 1: polarized X rays and reported that they increased the brightness
Speaker 1: of an electric spark. And after he made this observation, uh,
Speaker 1: other individuals working in the field they backed him up
Speaker 1: on this said, oh, yeah, we see it too, And
Speaker 1: within three years hundreds of papers had been written about
Speaker 1: in rays with all sorts of new properties thrown into
Speaker 1: the vat here in eluding various connections with muscle activity
Speaker 1: and the inner workings of the human mind, as if,
Speaker 1: like you know, uh, intense human thought could create inn
Speaker 1: in rays. Uh. And in the midst of all of this,
Speaker 1: American physicist Robert W. Wood steps in. He was something
Speaker 1: of a declaim an acclaimed debunker at the time, and
Speaker 1: he looked into the matter. He observed blonde Let's demonstrations
Speaker 1: himself like firsthand, and he did not see the increase
Speaker 1: in the electric sparks brightness. And then when blonde Lott
Speaker 1: and his assistance conducted an experiment with the prism, which
Speaker 1: was another thing that they did to to try and
Speaker 1: prove the existence of these in rays uh to show
Speaker 1: how it refracted like light, which of course X rays
Speaker 1: do not. UM would did a curious thing. He quietly
Speaker 1: removed the prism while they were from their experiment. While
Speaker 1: they were conducting it, and the researchers continued to see
Speaker 1: the in rays or reports seeing the in rays and
Speaker 1: so uh so really would just completely discredited this. He
Speaker 1: reported on it, and after he he he did so,
Speaker 1: no one saw an N ray again. This was essentially
Speaker 1: essentially in an illusion that was brought on by just
Speaker 1: the zeal for discovery and the feeling that there were
Speaker 1: going to be more rays and uh and and and
Speaker 1: that it was just inevitable that they would be found. Well,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned earlier, this was a time of tremendous discovery,
Speaker 1: but it was also a time when people believed tons
Speaker 1: of scientific things that later turned out to be completely wrong.
Speaker 1: The luminiferous ether that's just gone, there's nothing there, nothing
Speaker 1: to the theory, but but it was widely accepted at
Speaker 1: this time. Yeah, Burke rights in the day of the
Speaker 1: universe changed quote. There was never any suggestion that Blondelt
Speaker 1: was a charlatan. He and his colleagues were victims of
Speaker 1: the expectation that in rays would be discovered, and when
Speaker 1: they built instruments to see the rays, they saw them
Speaker 1: for a short time. This non existent phenomenon is did
Speaker 1: the most stringent tests and methods known to science. So
Speaker 1: it becomes something of a you know, a cautionary tale
Speaker 1: about over enthusiasm, uh in scientific research and the dangers
Speaker 1: of it potentially outstripping the rigors of science and scientific investigation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can understand why people will be excited, but simmer down, folks.
Speaker 1: There's also kind of an interesting invention to close out
Speaker 1: this episode of Invention, the the the instruments that they
Speaker 1: invented to see the non existent in rays um. Because again,
Speaker 1: it's not like a pooping duck robot. It's not a
Speaker 1: it's it's not a work of Charlottan. It is just
Speaker 1: a work that compounds and illusion. Yeah, well, meaning enthusiasm
Speaker 1: can still breed. Gremlin's that it can. That it can.
Speaker 1: All right, So that you have another episode of Invention,
Speaker 1: we can file that one away and if you want
Speaker 1: to check out the files. If you want to see
Speaker 1: other episodes of the show, head on over to invention
Speaker 1: pod dot com. That is our website. You'll find the
Speaker 1: other episodes as well as links out to our social
Speaker 1: media accounts, and if you want to discuss the show
Speaker 1: with other listeners, we would recommend going to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind discussion module. That's a Facebook group where
Speaker 1: you know mostly we've talked about episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, but we're also happy to discuss episodes
Speaker 1: of Invention there as well. Huge thanks to our friend
Speaker 1: Scott Benjamin for research assistants on this show, and to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Torri Harrison. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, was feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, suggest a topic for the future
Speaker 1: of Invention, or just to say hi let us know
Speaker 1: how you found out about the show. You can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at invention pod dot com.