62 
The Queensland Naturalist 
April, 1930 
ROENTGEN OR X-RAYS : THEIR PRODUCTION 
AND PROPERTIES. 
By J. Nebe. 
(Delivered before the Queensland Naturalists’ Club, 
18th November, 1929.) 
As 1 have been requested by several members of the 
Club to give a lecture on X-Rays, I have much pleasure 
in doing so, and hope the subject will be of sufficient in- 
terest to warrant the taking up of a valuable time this 
evening. 
The subject is a very large one, but 1 shall be brief 
in explaining the “Production and Properties of X-Rays/* 
You will excuse me if the subject drifts away somewhat 
from our regular nature studies, for strictly speaking, 
X-Rays do not occur free in nature. However, we may 
consider them as phenomena of nature and treat them as 
such accordingly. 
We wi'U picture in our mind a man, sitting in his hut, 
again and again exciting a piece of Amber (or as it was 
then known as “Electron”) by rubbing it with a fur and 
watching it attracting small particles such as pieces of 
paper and feathers. This man was the Greek philosopher 
Thales, living in 600 B.C. He studied this phenomenon of 
nature, and the electrical age was born but it took a long 
time to develop. It took 2,000 years 1o advance one step 
further. It was in the year 1600 when Gilbert, the Eng- 
lishman, was able to prove that some other substances 
such as glass sealing wax, and sulphur, became electrified 
like amber. These he called “electric bodies." and all 
other bodies were supposed to be “non electric." 
From Gilbert’s time onward, until Faraday’s time, 
practically nothing further developed, but since then, that 
is about a hundred years ago, many have been the lovers 
of Nature that have laboured hard, but with pleasure, to 
solve problems and extract valuable information from 
her. One of these workers was Professor Roentgen, who, 
in the year 1895, is credited with the discovery of a then 
unknown ray, which he himself could not account for at 
that time, and called it the X-Ray, meaning the unknown. 
The value of this new ray, and its properties 
(especially in medicine), was soon realised, and to-day it 
is a comparatively simple matter to produce this ray. 
The course of the rays and their properties are no more 
obscured in darkness. The expression of the X is now 
superceded by the name of Roentgen Ray, in honour of 
its discoverer. 
