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By Matthew Lavine

At the shut of the 19th century, the invention of wierd new types of strength arrested the yank public's realization in ways in which no clinical discovery ever had sooner than. The fascination with X-rays and radioactivity that was once kindled in these early years advanced to impact the process undefined, public coverage, and the cultural authority of scientists and physicians. american citizens uncovered themselves to radiation in ways in which appear stunning now, whilst wisdom approximately radiation, its dangers, and its purposes percolated in the course of the public discourse. This groundbreaking cultural background demonstrates how the busy alternate of views among researchers, popularizers, marketers, and most people gave upward push to the 1st nuclear tradition, one whose lasting results may later be obvious within the regular "atomic age" of the post-war 20th century.

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Extra resources for The First Atomic Age: Scientists, Radiations, and the American Public, 1895-1945

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The population that drew its education from these sources could, past a certain point, be relied upon to know that x-rays and radium had some similar effects and applications (exposing film, for instance, or treating tumors), and certainly that the former was generated by machines and the latter 22 T H E F I R S T AT O M I C AG E by a naturally occurring substance. Most, however, would not know precisely the nature of the physical differences between the energies involved. For the most part, this book will deal with x-rays and radium, and only incidentally with other forms or sources of radiation.

7 Not all mentions of Roentgen’s discovery were about the phenomenon itself. From the speed and imagination with which the popular press adapted the term “x-ray” for metaphorical use, the pervasiveness of the excitement that surrounded them becomes clear. Science reportage may occasionally slip into jargon, but editors of book reviews and the society pages do not permit allusions that their readers will not understand. The word was used profligately, almost carelessly, and in a wildly divergent range of tones that neatly capture the incoherence of the general public’s initial response.

For turn-of-the-century audiences, the natural world might be serene or terrible, but it was understood to be rational in its way: the mysteries of nature were nevertheless bound by certain inviolable rules. Laboratories, artificial spaces in which scientific “wizards” put nature to the test, connoted solemnity and rigor. The new rays upset consensus and flouted the laws: they were, as a much-reprinted poem in the magazine Photography put it, naughty. The Roentgen Rays, the Roentgen Rays What is this craze: The town’s ablaze With the new phase Of X-ray’s ways.

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