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After years of doing this kind of<br />
research, I’ve learned that all new<br />
fields of scientific endeavor will go<br />
through periods of utter chaos before<br />
they settle into a regular discipline<br />
with well-defined terms, stable categories,<br />
and general methods. The task<br />
of any researcher is to work through<br />
the early literature and find that key<br />
moment when ideas begin to solidify.<br />
THE CHAOS OF<br />
RÖNTGEN’S XfiRAYS<br />
The early days of physics produced<br />
many fields that began in chaos and<br />
moved quickly into order. Few present<br />
a more dramatic story than the discovery<br />
of X-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen<br />
in late 1895. To both scientists and the<br />
public, X-rays seemed to be an entirely<br />
new phenomenon that didn’t exactly<br />
fit into the theories of electricity and<br />
magnetism that had been maturing<br />
over the prior 50 years.<br />
Röntgen discovered X-rays in<br />
early November and was mystified<br />
by them. Being a careful scientist, he<br />
attempted to identify the basic nature<br />
of this radiation. He assembled his<br />
notes from this work into an article<br />
that is little more than a list of observations.<br />
“A Discharge from a large<br />
induction coil is passed through a<br />
Hittorf’s vacuum tube,” he begins.<br />
This apparatus will cause a piece of<br />
paper covered with barium platinocyanide<br />
to glow. “The fluorescence is<br />
still visible at two meters distance,”<br />
he wrote. “It is easy to show that the<br />
origin of the fluorescence lies within<br />
the vacuum tube.”<br />
In the last paragraphs of the article,<br />
Röntgen admitted that he didn’t have<br />
a theory that explained the properties<br />
of X-rays. He rejected as “unlikely” the<br />
idea that they were a form of electromagnetic<br />
radiation and hence related<br />
to visible light. Instead, he speculated<br />
that his discovery was an entirely new<br />
form of energy. “Should not the new<br />
rays,” he asked, “be ascribed to longitudinal<br />
waves in the ether?”<br />
Had X-rays been less novel, had<br />
they not been able to a pass through<br />
soft human tissue and reveal the<br />
hidden bones, then Röntgen’s speculations<br />
about the luminiferous ether<br />
and longitudinal waves would have<br />
percolated through the community<br />
of physicists and would have been<br />
tested in a relatively systematic way.<br />
However, X-rays were indeed novel,<br />
and they could reveal the inner parts<br />
of the human body, so Röntgen’s<br />
ideas quickly moved into the laboratory<br />
and living room.<br />
All new fields of<br />
scientific endeavor<br />
will go through<br />
periods of utter<br />
chaos before they<br />
settle into a regular<br />
discipline with welldefined<br />
terms, stable<br />
categories, and<br />
general methods.<br />
THE EXCITEMENT<br />
OF THE POPULAR PRESS<br />
Barely four weeks after the original<br />
article appeared, news of this<br />
strange new ray reached all the<br />
capitals of Europe. “The invention of<br />
neither the telephone nor the phonograph<br />
has stirred up such scientific<br />
excitement as this Röntgen discovery<br />
in photography,” reported the London<br />
correspondent for The New York<br />
Times. “The papers everywhere are<br />
full of reports of experiments, and of<br />
reproductions of more or less ghastly<br />
anatomical pictures.”<br />
In general, the Times and other<br />
newspapers offered accurate descriptions<br />
of the experiments and the<br />
phenomena that had been observed.<br />
Yet, the papers weren’t scholarly<br />
journals and couldn’t distinguish<br />
well-conceived theory from rampant<br />
assumption. They speculated about<br />
what Röntgen meant when he mentioned<br />
“longitudinal waves in the<br />
ether” and listened to everyone who<br />
claimed credit for the discovery. “A<br />
French savant is said to have been<br />
securing similar results for several<br />
years by the use of an ordinary kerosene<br />
lamp,” offered the Times, which<br />
also claimed that it had found “that<br />
this discovery was not only made by<br />
a Prague professor in 1885” and that<br />
“a full report of the achievement was<br />
made to the Austrian Academy of Sciences<br />
in 1885.”<br />
ORGANIZING IGNORANCE<br />
Surprisingly, the popular press<br />
wasn’t alone in publishing speculation.<br />
The discovery of X-rays<br />
created a massive wave of papers<br />
that crashed on the scholarly community<br />
that winter. More than 125<br />
appeared before the first anniversary<br />
of the discovery. Some were good.<br />
Some were poorly conceived and ill<br />
written. Some identified the major<br />
applications for the waves. Some<br />
wandered into strange and unsupported<br />
speculations.<br />
The articles appeared so quickly<br />
that few could have been reviewed<br />
only by an editor and not an outside<br />
referee. Researchers would read a<br />
description of X-rays in a newspaper,<br />
conduct an experiment, and see their<br />
results published in fewer than six<br />
weeks. Many of these articles were<br />
part of a growing chain of work, in<br />
which one article spawns new experiments,<br />
which in turn spawn new<br />
work. Unfortunately, most of these<br />
researchers were engaged in speculation<br />
that was no better informed<br />
than the newspapers. On 14 February<br />
1896, Columbia physicist Michael<br />
Pupin published a simple framework<br />
for studying these waves, but his<br />
ideas had limited influence in those<br />
first months.<br />
Less than two weeks after Pupin’s<br />
paper appeared, a pair of researchers<br />
built a simple X-ray apparatus and<br />
started applying it to everything that<br />
they could find. A colleague asked<br />
them to “undertake the location of a<br />
bullet in the head of a child that had<br />
been accidentally shot.” They agreed<br />
APRIL 2010<br />
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