THE INVISIBLE MADE VISIBLE
Open Access
- 29 July 2011
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Informa UK Limited in Media History
- Vol. 17 (4), 345-358
- https://doi.org/10.1080/13688804.2011.602856
Abstract
This article focuses on the early history of X-rays. It argues that, during the first years after their discovery in 1895 by German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, they were regarded as a technological attraction and a visual medium. While their application in medical practice was not yet fully established, the possibility of seeing into the realm of the invisible encouraged pioneers of this technology to actively exploit their visual powers. By using a media-history framework, and relying on primary and secondary sources in English, German, French, and Italian, the article takes into account three aspects of the rays' early display: its character of technological attraction; its association with photography; and its connection to beliefs in the supernatural and the occult.Keywords
This publication has 12 references indexed in Scilit:
- Media as modern magic: Early x‐ray imaging and cinematography in SwedenEarly Popular Visual Culture, 2008
- Always Already NewPublished by MIT Press ,2006
- New Media, 1740–1915Published by MIT Press ,2003
- "Looking Radiant": Science, Photography and the X-ray Craze of 1896Victorian Review, 2001
- Calibration and Work in the X-Ray Economy, 1896-1928Social Studies of Science, 2000
- Rontgen's Ghosts: Photography, X-Rays, and the Victorian ImaginationLiterature and Medicine, 1997
- Early CinemaPublished by Bloomsbury Academic ,1990
- "Primitive" Cinema: A Frame-up? Or the Trick's on UsCinema Journal, 1989
- X Rays and the Quest for Invisible Reality in the Art of Kupka, Duchamp, and the CubistsArt Journal, 1988
- British Medical JournalBMJ, 1896