Abstract
One of the loveliest and most popular stories of chance discoveries is about X-rays. This is perhaps so because everyone has seen some X-ray pictures. The story may make one think that the phenomenon is very simple (how have people not recognized it much earlier?) but at the same time most mysterious (how to peep into me?). The tale about chance starts with the Crookes tube, a more or less evacuated discharge tube which is the ancestor of all present-day fluorescent lamp and cathode ray tubes (older TV screens and monitors). If the tube contains some gas, it gives light. If it is completely evacuated, it stays dark but there flows some sort of radiation within the tube. This was called cathode ray. Its existence has been revealed through the fluorescence of the glass wall and also through the shadow on the fluorescing bulb cast by any metal object which intersects the path of the rays (Fig. 15.1).
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