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Somehow Röntgen's
electrical device was producing rays that
seemed to be impervious to matter, but at last
he found something to stop them: lead left a
shadow proving that the mystery rays were
definitely real.
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Earlier that day, as the
November dusk darkened the laboratory, he had noticed
that whenever he made sparks in the tube, a
fluorescent screen at the other end of the laboratory
table glowed slightly. This was the signal that he
had been looking for, the sign that invisible rays
were being produced in the spark tube, crossing the
room and striking the screen, producing the faint
glimmer. To track the rays he had been putting pieces
of card in their way, but the screen continued to
glow whether the cards were there or not as if the
rays were able to pass clean through them. He then
tried to block the rays with metal but thin pieces of
copper and aluminium were as transparent as the card
had been.
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The Nobel Prize in
Physics 1901 - Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen
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