X-Ray Tube
X-Ray Tube
Usage conditions apply
- Description
- Cold cathode glass x-ray tube with a large copper heat sink surrounding the tungsten target on the anticathode, and a “KESSELRING X-RAY TUBE CO. / CHICAGO, ILL. / PATENTED NOV. 23, ????” inscription. Hermann M. Kesselring was a German citizen living in Chicago, who was still in business in 1921.
- Emil Hermann Grubbé (1875-1960), the donor, was a graduate of Valparaiso University and a student at the Hahnemann Medical College in Chicago who in 1896, while playing around with Crookes tubes, found his hands becoming itchy, swollen and blistered. Soon thereafter, Grubbé learned that Wilhelm Röntgen, a German physicist, had discovered that Crookes tubes emit curious and invisible penetrating rays that he called X-rays. Grubbé built an X-ray machine soon thereafter and used it for therapeutic purposes.
- Ref: Henry Lyman Sayen, “Roentgen Ray Tube,” U.S. Patent 594,036 (Nov. 23, 1897), assigned to The Queen Company.
- “DR. E. H. GRUBBÉ, X-RAY PIONEER, DIES AT AGE 85,” Chicago Tribune (March 27, 1960), p. A7.
- Paul C. Hodges, The Life and Times of Emil H. Grubbe (1964).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Object Name
- X-Ray Tube
- tube, x-ray
- maker
- Kesselring X-Ray Tube Company
- place made
- United States: Illinois, Chicago
- Physical Description
- glass (overall material)
- metal (overall material)
- metal, copper (overall material)
- rubber (overall material)
- Measurements
- average spatial: 33 cm x 18 cm x 53 cm; 13 in x 7 3/32 in x 20 7/8 in
- ID Number
- MG.M-05010
- accession number
- 161220
- catalog number
- M-05010
- Credit Line
- Gift of Emil Grubbé
- See more items in
- Medicine and Science: Medicine
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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