WEBVTT - Invention Playlist: The X-Ray 0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:12.000 Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert lamp and 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:14.319 I'm Joe McCormick, and I gotta start you off with 0:00:14.360 --> 0:00:17.439 a pop quiz today. Robert, Actually, no, this isn't a 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:19.919 pop quiz. Let's not pretend because you already know the 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:22.520 answer to this, It's in the notes. But here's the question. 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:25.480 Would you have known the answer if you didn't do 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:28.560 the research for this episode? The question is do you 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:32.199 know who was the very first person ever to receive 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:35.600 a Nobel Prize in physics? I would not have known 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:38.640 prior to recording this, not off the top of my 0:00:38.680 --> 0:00:40.599 head either. No, I wouldn't have been able to come 0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:44.040 up with a name. So the very first Nobel Prize 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.600 in Physics recipient is a German physicist by the name 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:52.040 of Wilhelm Konrad Rundkin. And in the words of the 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:55.880 Nobel Prize organization, he got the prize quote in recognition 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:59.280 of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:03.840 of the remarkable rays subsequently named after him. So raise 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:07.120 named after him one of these Wilhelm rays. Yeah, we 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:10.720 don't call him that. No, No, these were the Runtkin rays. 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:13.160 And sure enough, if you go back into the eight 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:15.360 ten nineties, and look at the journals of the time. 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:18.399 You can find like articles in the journal Nature by 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:20.640 no less than J. J. Thompson, the guy who's credited 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:24.440 with the discovery of the electron, comparing Runtkin rays with 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:28.840 the radiation emitted by uranium salts. But most people, probably 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:31.480 today do not know what Runtkin rays are because we 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:34.240 call them by a different name. We call them X rays, 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:37.000 and that is going to be the topic for today. 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:39.920 We're gonna be talking about X rays. Now. Of course, 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:42.800 this is a show about invention, and before you get 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:45.240 out all your well, actually's it's quite true that X 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:48.120 rays were never at any point invented. They are not 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:51.200 a human invention. They are part of nature. In fact, 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:54.080 X rays are no more human invention than visible light 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:56.560 is than though what makes X rays special is that 0:01:56.600 --> 0:01:59.920 while we've long had the ability to produce copious amount 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:03.200 of visible light, it's only since around the beginning of 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:05.360 the twentieth century, a little bit before the beginning of 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:08.280 the twentieth century, that we understood how to produce and 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:11.520 control X rays. And it's this power, the power of 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:14.640 the X ray machine that we're looking at today and 0:02:14.680 --> 0:02:16.760 That's one of the wonderful things though about this episode, 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:18.560 is that this is a case where we can point 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:25.280 to one individual, one scientist, one physicist, and and identify 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:29.160 their key role in this turning point in history. Yeah. 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.480 I think a lot of inventions are are kind of murkier, right, 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:34.399 Like a lot of things that we think of as 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:38.600 inventions are actually just like slight modifications of something that 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:41.200 came before. H This is a case where there really 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:45.840 was a tremendous, sudden breakthrough and it had far reaching 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:49.120 effects all over the world. Just try to imagine the 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:52.680 time before X rays, Before say X rays in a 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:56.320 diagnostic medical context. We now know X rays are useful 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:59.079 for a lot more than just medicine. But just think 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:02.360 about going to the doctor and maybe having something wrong 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:05.480 inside you at a time when there were no X rays. Yeah. 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:08.160 This reminds me of the old saying um about how 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:10.400 a book is man's best friend outside of a dog 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:13.000 or was that because inside of a dog is too 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:16.600 dark to see? Yeah, but it is. It is dark 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:19.320 inside the body, and it was it was truly dark 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:21.760 and in many other ways before the X ray, Because 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:24.560 before X rays, the best way to peer inside the 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:27.560 living body. It was to look through a natural aperture 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:31.239 using what you would call the old knifeoscope. Yeah. Basically, yeah, 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:32.840 if you if you didn't have a natural aperture to 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:34.359 look into, you would have to make one, You'd have 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:37.480 to cut one. And it's I think it was really 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:41.720 difficult to overstate the importance of this bit of medical technology, 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:45.280 the ability to see how bones and tissues are aligned, 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:47.680 to see what might be wrong with them, what's broken, 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:51.080 how are they healing. But to use a very basic 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:54.240 example that comes up a lot discussing the X ray 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:57.120 and the advent of x ray technology is, Uh, you 0:03:57.160 --> 0:03:59.840 have an individual who is say shot with a with 0:03:59.880 --> 0:04:02.880 a by a gun. A bullet enters their body. Now, 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:05.680 sometimes the bullet exits the body, but other times it 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:08.840 does not. How do you find the bullet? Well, today 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:11.520 we can x ray, somebody find the foreign map matter 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:12.960 and you know, hone in on where we need to 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:15.800 remove it from. But prior to this, one might have 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:18.160 to do a bit of searching and sometimes the bullet 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:21.120 couldn't be found at all, which can have dire results. 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:24.479 In one for instance, a US President James Garfield was 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:27.760 shot and subsequently died in large part because they could 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:31.200 not find the bullet. That story is actually weird and 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:33.559 worth reading about in depth if you ever get a chance. 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:37.120 The the assassin was a guy named Charles Julius Gatteaux. 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:40.960 Who he was, this dude who thought that he had 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:45.400 helped James Garfield get elected, and so he thought that 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:48.919 God was telling him that he had like a special 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:51.640 appointment coming to him, like that he deserved a console 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:54.920 ship or something, and he ended up shooting James Garfield. 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:57.600 But it's often been said that Garfield's death was not 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:01.719 caused directly by the assassin's bullet, but by the failures 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:04.240 of medicine at the time, because he didn't die until 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:07.480 eleven weeks after he was shot, and not only could 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:10.040 the doctors not find the bullet inside him, they had 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:13.080 to keep digging around looking for it with like the 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:17.799 unsterilized equipment and dirty hands of the time, probably leading 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:20.920 to the infections of the wound which ended up killing him. Now, 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:22.640 I don't I don't want to imply that the X ray, 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:25.160 of course, is our only way of understanding what's going 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:28.080 on inside the body or diagnosing illnesses, but it is 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:30.919 tremendously important, and that was one of the reasons that 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:34.080 X rays are taken so often. That is why I 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:38.800 venture to say everyone listening to this podcast has received 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:41.680 an X ray in their life. I'm sure you've received 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:43.960 multiple X rays. I would be I would be shocked 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:46.080 if there was anyone out there who has never received 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:48.080 an X ray. And you should be thankful that X 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:50.760 rays are so much safer today than they were when 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:54.040 they were first invented. But even when, even back at 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:55.719 that time, when they were dangerous, they could be a 0:05:55.760 --> 0:05:59.120 life saving intervention. Um so a bit more, I guess 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:02.280 on Mr Runchkins So. He was born in Prussia now 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:07.679 Germany March five. He died in February of nineteen twenty 0:06:07.760 --> 0:06:11.160 three in Munich. And in the mid eighteen nineties, Runtgan 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:14.720 was working as a professor of physics at Wurzburg University 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:19.760 in Bavaria, and around this time, the behavior of discharge 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:23.960 known as cathode rays was extremely hot stuff in science. 0:06:24.040 --> 0:06:26.920 Lots of physics researchers around the world that they were 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:31.560 pushing the limits of science working with cathode ray tube experiments. 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:34.360 So what's a cathode ray tube? Here's the simple version. 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:38.760 You get an enclosed glass tube and use a vacuum 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:40.400 to suck most of the air out of it. You 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:42.880 want to try to create like a partial vacuum, a 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:47.279 rarefied gas environment inside the tube. And then inside this tube, 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:50.560 you have two metal electrodes known as a cathode and 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:54.839 an anode, And imagine you connect those two electrodes separately 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:57.520 to the terminals of a battery. The cathode is connected 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:00.200 to the negative terminal. The anode is connected to the 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:04.240 positive terminal. Now, obviously the current wants to flow, right, 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:06.640 it wants to flow from the negative to the positive. 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:09.680 And if you apply a great enough voltage to this tube, 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:12.440 you will actually begin to see the tube glow as 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:15.960 a result of electrons flying off of the cathode and 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:19.120 jumping to the anode, jumping across the gap. And so 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:22.320 different forms of the anode can create different effects. Like 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:25.240 if you use an anode that's the receptive terminal with 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:26.920 a hole in the middle, so it's kind of a 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:30.520 ring that's attracting these electrons, you can essentially create a 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:34.320 kind of beam of electrons that flows through the anode 0:07:34.320 --> 0:07:36.880 and projects against the inside wall of the tube on 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:39.280 the far side. And if you use an anode in 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:42.120 a particular shape. You can kind of cast a shadow 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:44.320 in that shape of the two against the back of 0:07:44.360 --> 0:07:47.840 the two wall, surrounded by the glow of the streaming 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:51.720 electron flow. Now, of course, at the time, physicists did 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:53.800 not know what was happening in the tube right. The 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:58.440 electron was not even formally discovered until when the physicist J. J. 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:02.640 Thompson used Catherine Cathode ray tube experiments to prove the 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:06.280 existence of this tiny sub atomic particle with a negative charge, 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:08.840 which we would later come to call the electron. In 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:11.000 the years before this, there was still a lot of mystery, 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:14.320 what's happening, what's causing this glow? So a little bit 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:18.320 earlier in the eighteen nineties, Wilhelm Rundkin was performing experiments 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:21.280 with Cathode ray tubes. Specifically, it was on one day 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:25.000 in November of eight that he was doing experiments on 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:27.880 a kind of tube called a Crooks tube, named after 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:32.679 the English physicist William Crooks, and while performing experiments with 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:36.559 the tube in a completely darkened room, Rundkin noticed out 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:39.280 of the corner of his eye that a screen of 0:08:39.400 --> 0:08:43.840 barium platinum cyanide in the room with him began to glow. 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:47.079 When the cathode ray was powered up. Now, this barium 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:49.800 platinum cyanide, this is a material that was used in 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:54.000 photographic plates that we now know fluoresces. It glows in 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:57.880 the presence of ionizing radiation like X rays and gamma rays, 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:01.320 and so in this dark room it was glowing. He 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:04.240 found that the screen was being excited by some kind 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:07.480 of energy that was emitted from the tube every time 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:10.280 he turned it on, and the screen glowed as if 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:13.280 it were being illuminated by light. But whatever caused it 0:09:13.320 --> 0:09:16.800 to glow was completely invisible to the naked eye. It 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:20.440 was as if he had discovered a form of invisible light, 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:25.200 which sounds pretty freaky to the Halloween music, and it 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:27.719 it is essential though in understanding what's going on here, 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:30.719 because they did not understand what this was. No, they 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:33.720 did not originally understand that this was a higher energy 0:09:33.840 --> 0:09:36.959 form of the same type of radiation that that causes 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:40.280 visible light. So he was doing experiments trying to figure 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:43.400 out what was going on here. He immediately started all 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:46.160 these different tests, like he found that the rays left 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:49.040 images on photographic plates, so that's one thing you could 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:52.760 use them to essentially expose a photograph, And he also 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:56.560 experimented with placing different objects between the tube and the 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:00.000 photographic plates, and he found that this unknown energy which 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:04.319 started calling X rays seemed to pass right through some 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:07.640 objects like wood and paper, while being stopped by others 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:11.480 that would leave a dark spot on the exposed photographic plate. 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:16.360 In his most famous experiment, Runt again extended this this 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:21.319 idea of the variable opacity or transparency of of solid 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:25.439 matter to his own wife's hand. His wife, Anna Bertha. 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:28.160 He asked her, he was like, honey, come in, and 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:31.199 he had her hold her hand over a photographic plate 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:34.640 while he bombarded it with X rays for about fifteen minutes. 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:37.320 And there's a story not not known for sure, if 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:39.959 it's true that, upon seeing the X ray of her 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:44.000 own hand, uh Anna Bertha said, I have seen my death. 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:46.679 And when you've seen the skeleton, yeah, when you look 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:48.440 at the image, it's not hard to see why it 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:51.920 is so spooky. You can see the bones within the 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:54.440 palm reaching up. I mean it looks like these like 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:57.600 long ghoulish fingers, because what you're actually seeing is that 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:01.520 the poem is composed of of long bones that connect 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:03.600 to the fingers at the knuckles, and so it makes 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:05.360 the X ray of the hand look like a hand 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:08.360 with like freakishly long fingers, and then her wedding ring 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:11.480 is in there, so it's this huge black lump on 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:15.520 the third finger. Uh, it's it's it's creepy. You know this. 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:18.400 I can't help but think of the scene and David 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:22.720 Cronenberg's The Fly where he wants to drag Gina Davis, 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:26.640 his character, his his his former lover into the telepod 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:32.440 with him as part of the ongoing experiment. But another 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:36.720 comparison I want to draw here between fictional mad science 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:39.839 and real science and real innovation is something we've already 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:42.719 touched on that he was not acting alone in all 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:45.000 of this research. There were other people engaging with the 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:49.080 same sort of technology, uh, sort of reaching after some 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:51.640 of the same ideas, and he was the first person 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:54.640 to really put things together. Yeah, so right after he 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:58.000 discovered this, he immediately pretty much began to publicize his findings. 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:01.640 It was the same year, and other researchers replicated them. 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:04.160 So other people did they you know, like, it wasn't 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:06.640 all that hard to put together the apparatus he had. 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:09.400 It wasn't like he had some special materials or something. 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:13.240 He was just like, hey, try this, and people pretty 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:16.160 easily could and they did, and so another scientist named 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:19.440 Arthur Schuster soon discovered that X rays were, in fact 0:12:19.559 --> 0:12:22.120 the same type of radiation is visible light, just in 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:26.320 a much higher energy form, higher frequency, shorter wavelengths. And 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:29.079 so it's almost like, you know, the the keys to 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:33.600 discovering the X rays had been lying around. Yeah, but 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:36.920 like with the fly, though, we just see this one 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:40.040 vision of this. Uh, this mad sign is working on 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:43.320 his own as if no one else has has really 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:46.640 any access to the same ideas or technology, when in 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:51.400 reality they would probably be like six other additional films 0:12:51.720 --> 0:12:55.439 in which someone did not successfully teleport themselves or did 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:58.160 not wind up being turned into a monster, that sort 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:01.199 of thing, I mean, I guess also like the fly, Uh, 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:06.120 this story has some lessons about informed consent right where 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:09.720 he I don't think that runtgen meant to cause his 0:13:09.760 --> 0:13:13.240 wife harm, but people at the time did not understand 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:17.520 that overexposure to X rays would be extremely dangerous, even lethal, 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:20.400 And so you have the idea here of like of 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:23.440 runt again inviting his wife into this experiment when she 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:26.240 didn't really know what the risks were, and he didn't either. Now, 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:28.880 so we've touched on before. Runtken, is this turning point 0:13:29.480 --> 0:13:33.000 because there's no real reason why someone else couldn't have 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:37.280 technically made the same discovery sooner uh as As. Then 0:13:37.360 --> 0:13:39.960 this was pointed out in Early History of X rays 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:43.679 by Alexei Asthmus. First of all, cathode ray tubes and 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:47.640 fluorescent screens were the only required technology, and they've been 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:52.520 around for decades. Some researchers had even observed a fluorescence 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:56.600 in the tubing or fogged photographic plates. But prior to 0:13:56.600 --> 0:13:59.840 the work of German physicist Nobel Prize winner and al 0:13:59.840 --> 0:14:04.880 toly total Nazi um like seriously joined up early and 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:09.240 despised any non German science, including the quote Jewish fraud 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:14.320 of relativity um Philip Lennard who lived eighteen sixty two seven. 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:16.679 Prior to his work, everyone was focused on what was 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:18.680 going on inside the tube, not the effects of the 0:14:18.760 --> 0:14:21.800 ray outside the tube, and Leonard was the was actually 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:25.200 the first to do this, and Runkin made the key 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:29.720 connections using equipment that came from Leonard and others as well, 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:32.760 including that Nicola tesla oh I didn't know that, but again, 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:35.800 it's just it's helpful to to look at at a 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:39.880 key innovation, key discoveries taking place, you know, not in 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:42.800 a vacuum like that. There is something that that there 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:46.000 is something kind of storybook special about that, that that 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:50.040 one person who is the first to make the ultimate 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:53.000 connection that leads to these new discoveries. Well, there were 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:56.600 so much going on with physics discoveries around the turn 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:59.480 of the twentieth century, in those decades surrounding it, I mean, 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:02.360 must have been such an exciting time to be working 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:04.760 in a field like this. All Right, we're gonna take 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:06.720 a break, and when we come back, we're going to 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:09.720 talk some more about the kind of energy the kind 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:13.960 of uh innovations that come in the wake of this discopion. 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:23.080 All right, we're back. So you remember the story We 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:25.480 don't know if it's true, but the story that in 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:29.000 a Bertha will Holm, Rundkin's wife, after she saw the 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:31.320 X ray of her hand, she said, I have seen 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:34.520 my death. And that's interesting in multiple ways because it 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:39.200 sort of unknowingly portends the risks the dangers of X rays. 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:41.000 But also I think what she would have meant by 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:43.320 that is that she could see her skeleton, she could 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:46.600 see inside her own body, and this was something so 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:49.520 unusual to people at the time, right, I mean, and 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:52.400 in many cases, essentially what a doctor is able to 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:54.200 do is take the X ray and say, oh, I 0:15:54.240 --> 0:15:56.640 see your death right here. Um, but we can remove it. 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.400 Don't worry about it, right, I Mean that's not always. Uh, 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:01.960 this is an over simplification and doesn't apply to all 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:05.840 medical scenarios, but it again, it does give us this 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:09.840 phenomenal ability to look inside the body and see in 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:12.000 some cases things that should not be their conditions that 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:15.840 should not be there, or the evidence of injury. And 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:18.680 soon after the discovery of X rays, in fact, very 0:16:18.760 --> 0:16:22.720 soon after, it was almost immediately picked up for medical uses. Yeah, 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:26.280 everything from examining broken bones to as we mentioned, finding 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:30.320 lost bullets in a body. Now, as with pretty much 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:34.080 any cutting edge medical technology found at the dawn of 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:37.720 the twentieth century. Uh, you can find a terrific look 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:42.520 at at at X ray technology in the Steven Soderberg 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:46.520 medical drama The Nick, which I think I've mentioned on 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:48.360 this show before. I definitely mentioned on Stuff to Blow 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:52.200 your mind before. Uh, there's just a fabulous drama that 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:55.920 wasn't seen by enough people. In the two seasons that 0:16:55.960 --> 0:16:59.000 it ran highly recommend anyone pick it up because in 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:02.640 season one, episode six, the hospital at the center of 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:05.520 this drama they acquire a second hand X ray machine 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:09.520 and the whole time there's just there's just reckless use 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:12.480 of X rays in this episode because again we're in 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:15.160 a period of time where there's all this enthusiasm about 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:18.800 the about the technology and there's this this just revelation 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:21.199 about what it can be used for, and at the 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:26.800 same time, uh, the dangers of the technology are only 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:29.800 just beginning to be made evident. But in in the 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:32.560 Nick there's a there's a scene where the salesman UH 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:35.520 and UH members of the hospital staff are are trying 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:38.720 it out without any regard for the dangers of radiation exposure. 0:17:39.080 --> 0:17:41.320 There's a scene where the salesman boasts that the machine 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:43.960 works just fine. He says, quote, my children were taking 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:46.640 dozens of X rays for the of themselves the other day. 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:50.520 They had the thing running for hours. That's some dark 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:53.600 humor it is. It's it's a wonderful show, but it's 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:55.800 like it's like in Madmen, when you know the kids 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:58.200 are always playing with like a plastic bag over their 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:01.240 heads and stuff from the don't care. Yeah, there are 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:03.879 a lot of moments like that that the show itself 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:08.080 is particularly good because it has this minimal electronic score. 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:10.680 It has this there's a way that they do the 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:14.200 cinematography that Soderbrook shoots it, you know, in which it 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:17.159 doesn't feel like a period piece it is. It's you know, 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:19.840 obviously a period said in a historic period, but it's 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:24.720 displayed bright and almost futuristic because it was a time 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:27.360 when all these amazing discoveries were being made and all 0:18:27.400 --> 0:18:30.560 of these technologies that are explored in this episode and 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:34.080 and others were the cutting the bleeding edge of our 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:39.800 understanding of human physiology but also the physical nature of 0:18:39.800 --> 0:18:43.600 the world. But it's also got this dark, retrospective irony. Yeah, 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:46.119 why why is it that we love stuff like that? 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:49.760 I've noticed that's a thing that lots of historical TV 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:54.359 shows and movies do now and generally audiences tend to love. 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:56.560 Is that kind of thing like that my kids were 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:58.600 playing with the X ray machine, or that you know, 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:01.960 this little girls playing with plastic bag overhead. Like people 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:05.280 just really love the like, oh, they don't understand the 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:07.639 danger yet. Well, in a way, I think a show 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:11.000 like The Nick is kind of reverse science fiction. Like 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:14.960 science fiction look looks to the future but deals with 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:20.280 contemporary anxieties about science and technological advancement and the cultural 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:24.200 response to all of that. And the nick especially looks 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:26.680 to the past, but I think you can you can 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:28.919 see ways in which it is also speaking to the 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:33.000 definitely speaking to the modern viewer. So it is kind 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:36.600 of a reverse science fiction. Yeah, that's interesting. Um, I 0:19:36.600 --> 0:19:39.399 mean it's interesting in a different way than looking at 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:42.680 the science fiction of the past, is because we different things. 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:47.200 Seems significant to us in retrospect then seemed then, I 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:51.600 guess seemed interesting to them in prospect exactly. Now, certainly 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:54.480 as we've we've touched on the danger was not recognized yet. 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:57.679 Rather than radiation, the prevailing idea was that this was 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:01.920 essentially a type of photography it was being demonstrated with 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:04.880 the X ray machine, and that the rays involved were 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:09.639 were more akin to harmless light visible light. Yes, and 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:13.280 Runkin accepted Leonard's view that the cathode rays were quote 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:17.240 vibrations of the ether uh and that it was ethereal 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:21.080 and didn't and you know, therefore did not reflect or refract. Uh. 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:26.399 They were He suggested longitudinal vibrations of the ether. The ether, 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:30.639 I guess this was the day of the luminiferous ether, right, 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:34.720 the idea that there was a substance through which light 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:37.560 had to propagate, and this was one thing that people 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:40.560 would often continue to think basically until Einstein. Right. But 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:43.160 part of Einstein's achievement was showing, like, you don't need 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:46.840 an ether theory to show how light travels by the way. 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:49.080 This is another thing it's interesting about Runkin is that 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:52.960 he himself only published three papers on X rays during 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:55.399 his life, But again, there were just so many people 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:57.840 that were just ready to jump in on this research. 0:20:58.000 --> 0:20:59.800 I know one of his papers I was looking at 0:20:59.800 --> 0:21:01.800 an article that talked about how I think it was 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:04.360 his very last paper on X rays was about how 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:07.119 to make them visible? And I think it was like 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:09.680 that they could be perceived directly by the eye at 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:14.040 a very high intensity or certain circumstances. Interesting, it doesn't 0:21:14.040 --> 0:21:17.840 sound safe, but but again, yeah, it was. It was 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:22.160 all these other researchers and innovators and inventors that came 0:21:22.280 --> 0:21:26.720 in the aftermath of his initial discovery that really made 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:29.640 all of this difference. Um. And then there were those 0:21:29.640 --> 0:21:31.720 two that dismissed it as mere novelty, and this is 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:34.000 actually reflected in that episode of The Nick as well. 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:38.720 But other people saw its appeal. Dr Henry W. Ktell, 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:44.080 demonstrator of morbid anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania. It 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:47.320 sounds like a Hogwarts position, doesn't, But he told The 0:21:47.320 --> 0:21:51.640 New York Times in quote, the surgical imagination can pleasurably 0:21:51.760 --> 0:21:56.159 lose itself and devising endless applications of this wonderful process. 0:21:56.640 --> 0:22:00.600 And that is in contrast to other individuals who thought 0:22:00.600 --> 0:22:02.679 this was a fad, that this was just a you know, 0:22:02.680 --> 0:22:05.199