Monday 5th January

On Monday 5th January, 1896:

"A German newspaper reported physicist Wilhelm Roentgen's discovery of X-rays"

In the absence of the article itself (from, various sources tell me, an Austrian newspaper Wiener Presse), This from an interview conducted in 1896 by H.J.W. Dam for Mclure's magazine, published in April 1896.

"I have been for a long time interested in the problem of the cathode rays from a vacuum tube as studied by Hertz and Lenard. I had followed theirs and other researches with great interest, and determined, as soon as I had the time, to make some researches of my own. This time I found at the close of last October. I had been at work for some days when I discovered something new."

"What was the date?"

"The eighth of November."

"And what was the discovery?"

"I was working with a Crookes tube covered by a shield of black cardboard. A piece of barium platino-cyanide paper lay on the bench there. I had been passing a current through the tube, and I noticed a peculiar black line across the paper."

"What of that?"

"The effect was one which could only be produced, in ordinary parlance, by the passage of light. No light could come from the tube, because the shield which covered it was impervious to any light known, even that of the electric arc."

"And what did you think?"

"I did not think; I investigated. I assumed that the effect must have come from the tube, since its character indicated that it could come from nowhere else. I tested it. In a few minutes there was no doubt about it. Rays were coming from the tube which had a luminescent effect upon the paper. I tried it successfully at greater and greater distances, even at two metres. It seemed at first a new kind of invisible light. It was clearly something new, something unrecorded."

"Is it light?"

"No."

"Is it electricity?"

"Not in any known form."

"What is it?"

"I don't know."

As linked above, the article is reproduced in its entirety by the wonderful folks at Project Gutenberg, who provide free e-books (and html-ready texts) of out-of-print, out-of-copyright texts. Rather like an online version of Fahrenheit 451.

And the quote:

"Better to wear out than rust out" - Richard Cumberland

A 'work quote' which I take to translate roughly as: "Work hard! Stress is great! Kill yourself with it!"