Source / Experimental radiograph and circulated print
In Würzburg on 22 December 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen made the radiograph commonly known as Hand mit Ringen (“Hand with Rings”), usually identified as the left hand of his wife, Anna Bertha Röntgen. Bone, soft tissue and metal registered differently, turning an unfamiliar physical effect into an immediately legible image of a living body's interior.
This was an experimental image, not a diagnosis. Its historical force came from a chain of apparatus, bodily exposure, photographic processing, printed copies, scientific correspondence, public demonstration and later clinical interpretation. Reading that chain also corrects the heroic claim that one photograph, or one investigator working alone, instantly created modern radiology.
Reading the image
Röntgen's 1895 preliminary communication described rays that penetrated paper, wood and human soft tissue more readily than denser materials. The hand image turned those comparisons into a compact anatomical demonstration: the bones and ring attenuated more of the radiation than the surrounding tissues.
The metal band, skeletal structures and faint outline of flesh occupy one familiar object. Their different shadows made the new rays persuasive even to viewers who did not understand gas-discharge physics. The image demonstrates differential attenuation; it does not by itself identify the rays' physical nature or measure a dose.
The result depended on an evacuated discharge tube, a high-voltage induction coil, distance and alignment, exposure time, a photosensitive plate and chemical processing, as well as an unmoving hand. Tube output was unstable and early exposures were long. Blur, geometric enlargement and contrast therefore recorded the arrangement of an experiment as well as anatomy.
The image encountered today is usually not an original radiographic negative. A Wellcome Collection albumen print, mounted at the Würzburg Physics Institute and lettered Hand mit Ringen in Röntgen's hand, came through physicist Arthur Schuster's family. The Science Museum Group separately catalogues a later photograph of a radiograph. Copy, negative, print and digital reproduction should not be treated as interchangeable originals.
No symptom, injury or therapeutic decision prompted this exposure. Anna Bertha supplied the living anatomy that made a physical experiment medically imaginable. The surviving mount names only a “hand with rings”; it does not record her experience, the terms on which she participated or a measured exposure.
From discharge tube to publication
Before November 1895: physicists including Johann Wilhelm Hittorf, William Crookes and Philipp Lenard had developed and studied electrical discharges in evacuated glass tubes and the behaviour of cathode rays. Some apparatus produced X-rays and some photographic plates were affected before Röntgen's work, but the effect was not recognised as a distinct radiation. Uwe Busch's study of later priority claims therefore distinguishes unknowingly producing an effect from identifying, investigating and publishing it.
8 November–22 December 1895: 8 November is the conventionally accepted date on which Röntgen noticed fluorescence outside a covered tube at the University of Würzburg. He then tested penetration through materials, effects on fluorescent screens and photographic plates, and whether the rays could be reflected, refracted or deflected. The University of Würzburg's exhibition catalogue dates the hand exposure to 22 December. Published accounts give differing exposure estimates, so an exact duration should not be inferred from the print.
28 December 1895: Röntgen submitted Ueber eine neue Art von Strahlen (“On a New Kind of Rays”) to the Würzburg Physico-Medical Society. It was a preliminary physical report, organised as seventeen numbered observations rather than a medical case study. It noted that a hand on a fluorescent screen showed dark bone shadows within fainter tissue and that photographic plates could register the rays. The hand photograph illustrated those claims when prints circulated with offprints; it was not printed inside the first pamphlet.
1–23 January 1896: Röntgen mailed offprints and, to a smaller group, sets of positive prints. Frans Zonneveld's study of a set sent to Hendrik Lorentz identifies nine images and shows how the hand print functioned beside technical studies of a doorpost, wire, metal and enclosed objects. A newspaper report appeared in Vienna on 5 January; Arthur Stanton's English translation appeared in Nature on 23 January. Replication depended not just on publicity but on existing international networks of physicists, instrument makers, photographers and medical practitioners.
Medical promise and contested adoption
On 30 January 1896 Berlin physician Moritz Jastrowitz used a different radiograph of a woman's hand in a lecture and article on the new rays. His contemporary account predicted uses for fractures, dislocations and foreign bodies, while also speculating about internal tumours and intestinal obstruction that early equipment could not reliably show. It records expectation, not proof that every proposed application worked.
Thin, movable extremities offered strong contrast between bone, tissue and metal. Thicker regions demanded longer exposures and gave less interpretable results. Locating a needle or bullet and examining a fracture became important early uses, but the image had to be related to palpation, symptoms, surgical access and the limits of projection: structures at different depths overlapped on one plate.
Andrew Warwick's study of German orthopaedic surgery from 1895 to 1900 shows that X-rays were initially disputed and selectively adopted. Surgeons used them within arguments about operative and non-operative treatment, and their value depended on particular body regions, cases and practices of demonstration. “Seeing without cutting” was a promise, not an automatic replacement for examination or judgment.
Clinical use required reliable equipment, electrical supply, plates, darkroom work, record keeping and people able to operate and interpret the apparatus. Joel Howell's study of early hospital use found that Pennsylvania Hospital owned a machine in 1897 but used X-rays for only a small share of patients in 1900 and 1909. Use expanded with improved equipment, a dedicated operator, departmental space and routine reporting. The celebrated hand image opened possibilities; institutions made them durable.
Exposure, injury and protection
1895–1896: the hand exposure preceded calibrated medical dosimetry and systematic shielding. The print cannot supply Anna Bertha's absorbed dose, and it does not document an injury. That uncertainty should neither be converted into a claim of harmlessness nor into a retrospective diagnosis.
From 1896: reports of skin inflammation, burns and hair loss followed prolonged experimental and medical exposures. Operators were repeatedly exposed while positioning tubes, holding patients or testing output with their own hands. A historical review by John Boice and colleagues traces how recognition of these injuries prompted shorter exposures, greater distance, shielding and other practical controls, although adoption was uneven. Later dose concepts should not be projected onto workers who initially lacked calibrated measurements.
1928: national rules and professional discussion preceded an international system. The second International Congress of Radiology established the International X-ray and Radium Protection Committee in Stockholm in response to observed harms. The organisation, renamed the International Commission on Radiological Protection in 1950, marks how far collective standards lagged behind the 1895 image and its rapid uptake.
Historical responsibility: Anna Bertha was neither merely a passive prop nor a modern research participant whose consent can be assumed from today's standards. The surviving technical sources preserve Röntgen's apparatus and observations far better than her words. The often repeated statement that she “saw her death” is not recorded in the 1895 paper or on the surviving print mount and should be treated as an anecdote in later retellings, not as the image's caption or clinical evidence.
Across the collection
Follow early attempts to localise injury and foreign objects, while keeping disputed priority claims in view.
Trace apparatus, specialist interpretation, professional roles, therapy and radiation protection.
Compare radiography with later imaging systems without treating technological succession as inevitable progress.
References
Würzburg: Stahel, 1895; offprint from the Sitzungsberichte der Würzburger Physikalisch-Medicinischen Gesellschaft, 132–141. Wellcome Collection record and digitised pamphlet. This is Röntgen's contemporary preliminary report of physical experiments; it is not a clinical case history and does not contain the hand print.
Nature 53 (23 January 1896): 274–276. DOI: 10.1038/053274b0. Arthur Stanton's contemporary English translation, useful for the sequence and language of Röntgen's observations.
Collection record 32971i for an albumen print from a radiograph, dated 1895 and received from Arthur Schuster's daughter in 1962. The catalogue says the hand is “possibly” Anna Bertha Röntgen's and records the lettering and mount; that qualified attribution is more precise than treating every reproduction as a self-identifying original.
Collection record A606881 for a paper-and-glass photograph of a radiograph. The catalogue identifies Anna Bertha's left hand and 22 December 1895 but describes a photographic copy, not the original negative.
2020 exhibition catalogue, especially pp. 28–43. An institutional synthesis using Würzburg archival objects for the apparatus, 22 and 28 December chronology, mailing, press circulation and January 1896 demonstration. Its commemorative framing makes comparison with primary and independent historical sources important.
Insights into Imaging 11 (2020): 46. DOI: 10.1186/s13244-020-00846-x. A study of the reprint and nine positive photographs preserved at Teylers Museum, with comparison to the Schuster and Zehnder sets. Some provenance links are explicitly described by the author as presumptions or personal communications.
Zeitschrift für Medizinische Physik 33, no. 2 (2023): 230–242. DOI: 10.1016/j.zemedi.2022.12.002. A historical review from the Deutsches Röntgen-Museum distinguishing prior unrecognised production of X-rays from Röntgen's recognition and systematic publication, and placing later priority disputes in context.
Originally published in Deutsche Medicinische Wochenschrift 22, no. 5 (30 January 1896): 65–67; translated by David Haney for German History Intersections. A contemporary physician's response showing both plausible early surgical uses and speculative expectations. Its illustrated hand was made in Berlin by P. Spies, not by Röntgen.
Isis 96, no. 1 (2005): 1–24. DOI: 10.1086/491543. A history-of-science analysis showing that early clinical value was disputed, selective and shaped by existing arguments about orthopaedic treatment.
Transactions of the American Clinical and Climatological Association 127 (2016): 341–349. PMCID: PMC5216491. Uses hospital case records to distinguish widespread claims about X-rays from slower institutional use and the creation of specialist services in the United States.
British Journal of Radiology 93, no. 1112 (2020): 20200282. DOI: 10.1259/bjr.20200282. A review of early injuries, practical controls, dose reduction, professional organisation and later protection systems.
Official institutional chronology of the International X-ray and Radium Protection Committee's formation at Stockholm in 1928 and reorganisation as the ICRP in 1950. It documents organisational milestones rather than the full social history of occupational exposure.