On January 5, 1896, newspapers around the world reported on a startling new discovery: invisible rays that could pass through flesh and reveal bones beneath the skin. Just weeks earlier, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen had stumbled upon the phenomenon while experimenting with cathode rays. He called them X-rays — “X” for unknown.

The public reaction was immediate and electric. Images of skeletal hands appeared in papers, and the implications were obvious: medicine would never be the same. For the first time, doctors could look inside the living human body without surgery, guessing, or harm.

Röntgen refused to patent his discovery, believing it should benefit humanity freely. Within a year, X-rays were already being used in hospitals across Europe and the United States — a reminder that some of the most world-changing technologies arrive not as inventions, but as revelations.

Thanks for reading,

The TTC Team

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