“I have seen my death.” These were the words of a woman when she saw an image of her hand. The woman was Anna Röntgen and the image was the first X-ray of a part of the human body. It was made by her husband, the German physics professor Wilhelm Röntgen. He had previously invented the X-ray while experimenting with so-called Crookes tubes. Great Inventions charts this revolutionary technology, including bizarre images of X-ray equipment in shoe shops, the importance of electron beams in medicine and their connection with space.
