State

Page Twenty- two THE STATE December 12, 1936 First X-ray Photo Л college prank at Davidson was responsible for the first X-ray pieture ever niaile in the I'nitiMl States. tty DICK YOUNG Golden Belt Manufacturing Company, Inc. - ★ - Manufacturers FINE HOSIERY - ★ ALSO SMALL CLOTH BAGS FOR ALL PURPOSES - ★ DURHAM, N. C. ASTI’DKXT'S prank at Davidson College resulted in the his¬ tory -making episode; "f the first X-rny picture in the United States. Three students, who brought the distinction of producing the first X- ray picture to be made in America to a North Carolina educational insti¬ tution. defied college rules in their tests to satisfy their curiosity and to see if what their professors were talk¬ ing about were actually true. Ami in so doing they produced t lie first X-ray picture. Davidson College now has the un¬ disputed claim of the first X-ray picture, although for many years this claim was challenged by Yale Uni¬ versity. It bad boon assorted that Yale produced the first. with David¬ son taking second place. The David¬ son picture, which now hangs in the college library, could not be denied and as Yale's picture could not lie of¬ fered in evidence the claim was dropped and the honor goes to the North Carolina institution. How It Happened Osmond I. Barringer, prominent t 'harlotle citizen, tells the story of the history-making X-ray adventure, lie and Kben ilurdie, now* of New Or¬ leans and Ponder Porter, now a phy¬ sician of Brooklyn. N. Y., were the students who made the picture. Mr. Barringer tells of the episode as follows: “In December, 1895, physios classes at Davidson were greatly in¬ terested in the study of Crookes’ lubes, an expensive piece of appara¬ tus which was part of the laboratory equipment. About that time, Boentgen, who is credited with the discovery of X-ray, was studying these tubes. The students at Davidson were more interested in the color dis¬ play of these tubes than in the phy¬ sics of the cathode ray. So were Roentgen and the other scientists who were studying them. “On danuary 4, 189G Roentgen made the announcement of his acci¬ dental discovery of the use of Crookes' tubes in making what he termed ‘shadow pictures.’ Student Curiosity “Dr. Henry bonis Smith, our phy¬ sics teacher, told us about the Roentgen discovery and there was much discussion as to whether it were true. On Sunday night, January 12. fiben llardie and Pender Porter were in my room and we were talking over the new discovery. The wish was expressed for Crookes’ tubes in order that we might see for ourselves whether the story our professor had been telling us was true. We thought that if we could have the use of these tubes for a few minutes we might make the experiment and no one would be the wiser. We decided we might pick the lock on the labora¬ tory door and get in. This we did and brought the tubes over to my room and took a picture of a .22 caliber cartridge inside a pillbox, a magnify¬ ing glass inside a ease and a marble inside an eggshell. Since the discus¬ sion had been along the lines of tak¬ ing pictures of fractured bones, we decided that it would be interesting to have an injured bone to X-ray. We agreed that if it were known we had broken into the laboratory we would be expelled and that we might as well break into the medical school, too. This we did and cut the finger from the body of a dead negro, used for experimentation by medical students. After we got all these articles as¬ sembled we took the picture. But we kept our picture ami escapade a se¬ cret and it was not until later that we realized we were making history for the college, instead of just breaking rules.”