JF Ptak Science Books Post 2463
I’ve bumped into another issue of the Physical Review (December 1911, pp 409-430, volume II (second series), #6) with the important William D. Coolidge paper, “A Powerful Roentgen Ray Tube With a Pure Electron Discharge”.
A decade-and-a-half after Wilhelm Roentgen’s discovery of x-rays (an epochal paper published at the tail end of 1895) this is the first appearance of what we think of as the modern X-Ray tube–a design that would be used for decades to come, and which provided clear and more accurate that had been seen, in a way opening this world up, well, exponentially. It is a very significant contribution to the history of science, and it was cool to find it again by chance.
[Source: Wikipedia, showing the Coolidge tube ca. 1917.]