While experimenting with cathode rays in his lab, German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen accidentally discovered x-rays on this date 119 years ago. Röntgen’s discovery came on November 8, 1895, when he noticed a shimmering effect on a chemically coated plate on a bench about 3 feet away from the tubes he was working with. He theorized that invisible rays were passing through the tubes to cause the effect, and spent the next few weeks experimenting. He discovered the rays passed through human flesh, as well as books and paper, but not more dense substances like bone or lead. When he took a picture of his wife’s hand being penetrated by the strange rays, exposing her bones, she exclaimed “I have seen my death!”

Röntgen called the discovery “x-rays” as a sort of placeholder name. (The “X” simply meant “unknown.”) The name stuck in English, but other languages name the rays for their discoverer, using names that are equivalent to “Röntgen rays.” Röntgen won the first Nobel Prize in physics in 1901, and the medical applications of his discovery were quickly apparent. For the first time, doctors could see inside the human body without surgery.

Slower to emerge was the understanding of the danger caused by exposure to radiation. Researchers reported burns after exposure to x-rays, and an assistant to Thomas Edison who frequently x-rayed his own hands died of skin cancer in 1904. Still, x-rays were regarded by many scientists as being as harmless as light. Seen as a fun novelty, x-rays could even be found in shoe stores to allow customers to view the bones in their feet as they were fitted for shoes in the 1930s. Eventually, the dangers became clear, and Röntgen’s discovery came to be applied in more limited settings. Healthcare and the TSA might be politically sticky industries, but one other thing ties them together: They both make frequent use of x-rays.

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