The High-Vacuum X-Ray Tube: Technological Change in Social Context

摘要

These words, written in 1902 by a Grand Rapids physician, vividly express an important characteristic of the early history of the use of x rays in medicine—the finicky nature of the gaseous-discharge tubes that were used to produce the rays. "That temperamental prima donna, the gas tube," was a central feature of the medical use of x rays from the time of their discovery by Roentgen in 1895 until another technology, the hot-cathode, high-vacuum x-ray tube, began to emerge some twenty years later. During this period, the "apparatus was feeble, inconstant in its output and unreliable." Only a few physicians tolerated the complicated "tangle of wires and batteries" and the "endless opportunity for gadgeteering."