X-ray of an author
Stories from Physics
for 11-14
14-16
Mark Twain may have inadvertently been the subject of the first X-ray. A few months before Röntgen’s discovery, Nikola Tesla had used a Geissler tube (an early form of discharge tube) to take a picture of Twain. The tube had emitted X-rays, which had spoiled the plate before the cap of the camera had been removed, producing a photographic plate with an image of an adjusting screw. Following the news of Röntgen’s discovery, Tesla is reported to have smashed the plate on the floor exclaiming: “Damned fool! I never saw it!”
References
W. B. Carlson, Tesla: Inventor of the Electric Age, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, p. 222.