Disovery of X-Ray
The discovery of X-Rays is another example of accidental discoveries. In 1894, Wilhem Konrad Rontgen was conducting some experiments on cathode rays in his laboratory in Wurzburg. Cathode tubes are evacuated tubes which emit invisible rays under certain electrical conditions. Rontgens was using barium platinocynide plates for detecting these rays.
One day he noticed fluorescence on one such plate which was lying on a bench in the room. What surprised him was that this plate was separated by a black paper screen from the cathode tube; it should not have received any fluorescence. Astonished by this phenomenon, he made further experiments. He found that the fluorescence was caused by some mysterious rays which came from the tube and which could travel through solid objects. Since he could not specify the nature of these rays at that time, he called them X-rays, a term by which these rays are known even now.
What is interesting is that Rontgen was not the first person to notice this fluorescence. Many other physicists, including the inventor of cathode tubes, Crookes, had also noticed the same thing happening in their labs. The difference was that while Rontgen saw a hidden meaning in the unexpected, Crookes wrote off a stinker to the firm supplying the plates for their bad quality material !!
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