The Discovery of X-rays

The apparition was so awful that Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen wondered if he had taken leave of his senses. He could hardly have been more surprised if he had looked into a mirror and no reflection stared back. It was approaching midnight on November 8, 1895. For sometime scientists had been reporting bizarre apparitions when they electrified the thin gas in vacuum tubes. The English physicist William Crookes, who saw unearthly luminous clouds floating in the air, had become convinced that he was producing ectoplasm, much beloved of Victorian seances, and had turned to spiritualism as a result. In Germany Röntgen was doing similar experiments and now, alone in the night, his imagination ran wild.

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