Green & Gardiner
1896 (ca)
No. 10. Lacerta Agilis
[British Batrachians and Reptiles]

Cabinet card, sciagraph
Bonhams - New York
History of Science, 22 Oct 2014, Lot: 235, X-Ray Photographs
 
An excellent group of remarkably detailed x-ray photographs, or sciagraphs, executed using Röntgen's revolutionary discovery of the x-ray. The photos depict what are surely the first x-ray views of two lizards and one frog. "Messrs. James Green and J.H. Gardiner exhibited a series of sciagraphs of British Batrachians and Reptiles in which the details of the skeleton were very sharply defined, and its relation to the external outline well shown. These sciagraphs … were taken with a Crookes's tube of the ordinary focus pattern actuated by a powerful induction-coil giving 8-in. sparks and the prints in every case were made from untouched negatives" (Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, Session 1896-97, November 5th, 1896, p 4).
 
LL/101934