Sarah Frances Whiting’s x-ray photographs

When German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovered x rays in November 1895, researchers across the world raced to replicate his work and produce their own versions of the remarkable images he obtained. Less than three months after Röntgen’s experiments, Wellesley College professor Sarah Frances Whiting became the first woman to repeat his feat. As Jacqueline Marie Musacchio and John Cameron relate in their feature article for Physics Today‘s August issue, Whiting was among the first people in the US to take x-ray photos, and she was almost certainly the first to do so in an undergraduate laboratory.

The original glass plates Whiting used in her experiments have not survived. But a series of x-ray photos made from those plates were recently discovered in a Wellesley campus building scheduled for demolition. Whiting annotated the photographs on the reverse. Her candid notes tell us the order in which the x rays were taken and show how the images improved as she and her colleagues gained more experience with Röntgen’s apparatus. Taken together, the photographs and notes are a vivid record of Whiting’s efforts to explore and master the new technique.

(Unless otherwise indicated, all photographs are courtesy of Wellesley College.)

Whiting’s first x-ray attempt shows only a very faint outline of the objects she was trying to image. The annotation reads as follows: “S. F. Whiting & Mabel Chase. A picture hook & pincers in a wooden box[.] First attempt. Underexposed but showed that success was attainable with apparatus in use viz a crooks tube made to show molecular shadows executed with 6 in coil.” Mabel Chase was a Wellesley College professor who assisted Whiting in the experiments.

A second attempt was more successful, although the images appeared blurry. Annotation: “Metal objects taken in a wooden box[.] The second picture taken just after newspaper accounts of xray discovery.”

Whiting and Chase’s attempts to capture x rays passing through blocks of different substances proved disappointing. Annotation: “The blocks used belonged to the Melloni apparatus to show diathermancy. 3rd picture. A bad print. Plate showed the different transparency of blocks of equal thickness of the dif. substances. Glass was most opaque a kind of green most transparent to the x rays. S. F. Whiting & Mabel Chase”

Whiting and her colleagues experimented with x rays of laboratory equipment, including this glass Cartesian diver. A Cartesian diver is a small figurine that can be placed in a sealed glass bottle filled with water; the figurine floats or sinks depending on air pressure, which illustrates the principle of buoyancy. Annotation: “The little glass imp belonging to the apparatus ‘Cartesian Diver.’ Glass opaque to x rays[.] Grace Davis.” Grace Davis was a Wellesley College student who later graduated in the class of 1898.

Whiting obtained a striking success with this x-ray image of metal objects inside a purse. The x rays passed easily through the leather and captured the outline of a key and a coin. Annotation: “Objects in a leather purse.”

Röntgen’s x ray of his wife’s hand and ring (left) was widely republished in both popular and scientific media. Whiting and her colleagues took a similar x-ray image (right) of an unidentified person’s hand wearing a ring. This photograph was not annotated; the hand probably belonged to Whiting or one of her collaborators. (Röntgen photograph is courtesy of the Wellcome Collection, CC BY-NC 4.0 .)