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115-Year-Old X-RayThis 115-year-old picture of fingers is one of the first images ever made with x-rays, whose discovery is being feted Monday with an anniversary Google doodle. (See "X-Rays on Google: Surprising Ways the Rays Are Used Today.") The hand belonged to Anna Bertha, wife of German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen, the discover of x-rays. The black glob on the fourth finger is a ring made of gold, which absorbs x-rays.Röntgen stumbled across x-rays on November 8, 1895, while experimenting with an early vacuum tube known as a Crooke's radiometer. He noticed that, when the cathode rays from the tube struck the end of a discharge tube, a previously unknown type of radiation that could penetrate matter was emitted.Röntgen created the picture of his wife's hand using the unknown, or x, rays a few days later."She apparently was not impressed by his photography," said Martin Richardson, a professor of optics at the University of Central Florida, whose group has been helping to pioneer the use of x-ray microscopy for biological studies since the early 1990s.According to some accounts, Anna exclaimed "I have seen my death!" after seeing the now famous image.(Related: "Iceman Bled Out From Arrow Wound, X-Rays Reveal.")—Ker Than
Image by Wilhelm Röntgen, via SSPL/Science Museum/Getty Images

Photos: X-Ray History—Hidden Kitten, Quackery, and More

See some of the most important—and oddest—images associated with x-rays, whose 115th anniversary is marked Monday with a Google doodle.

Published November 10, 2010