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Table of the Permeability of Various Substances to Roentgen Rays

A work made of photogravure, plate no. 5 from "research on photography with röntgen rays (versuche über photographie mittelst der röntgen’schen strahlen)".
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • A work made of photogravure, plate no. 5 from "research on photography with röntgen rays (versuche über photographie mittelst der röntgen’schen strahlen)".

Date:

1896

Artist:

Josef Maria Eder (Austrian, 1855–1944) and
Eduard Valenta (Austrian, 1857–1937)

About this artwork

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered x-rays on November 8, 1895, and announced his surprising find in a scientific paper at the end of that year. Within days, newspapers everywhere had picked up the story, and the x-ray’s manifold applications to science and society began to be explored. Just a few months later, the Austrian chemists Josef Maria Eder and Eduard Valenta replicated Röntgen’s experiments and made improvements to his apparatus, publishing their research in a booklet accompanied by fifteen photogravure images depicting objects and animals. In this image, they showed the responsiveness of a variety of materials (metals, glass, bone, wood, rubber, and more) to the x-ray, showing a range of permeability that is represented as different shades of gray. This elegant arrangement of samples from the darkest black to nearly white suggests a fundamental compatibility between scientific and aesthetic ordering principles in the nineteenth century.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Photography and Media

Artist

Josef Maria Eder

Title

Table of the Permeability of Various Substances to Roentgen Rays

Place

Austria (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1896

Medium

Photogravure, plate No. 5 from "Research on Photography with Röntgen Rays (Versuche über Photographie mittelst der Röntgen’schen Strahlen)"

Dimensions

Image: 23 × 17.8 cm (9 1/16 × 7 1/16 in.); Paper: 25.8 × 20.6 cm (10 3/16 × 8 1/8 in.); Mount: 48.9 × 34.1 cm (19 5/16 × 13 7/16 in.)

Credit Line

The Mary and Leigh Block Endowment Fund

Reference Number

2010.513

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/205246/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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