John Bauer died

11/07/1908 |

Category:

John L. Bauer, Henry Green’s former business partner in Green & Bauer, died in Brooklyn at a German hospital.

Bauer lived at 67 Church Street in Hartford, and he had been a member of the Hartford Saengerbund.
Bauer’s biography:

He and his mother came to the United States when he was 2, ca. 1875.
He studied glassblowing under Herman Jaeger.
He arrived in Hartford about 1894 to start work at the Aetna Electric Company.
He worked for Henry Green for a time, after Green took over the Aetna Electric Company in January 1898.
He and Green invented an x-ray tube with an angle target and the only successful regulator for x-ray machines.
He formed a partnership with Green to manufacture x-ray devices in September 1898.
He and Green dissolved their partnership after he became afflicted with x-ray burns.
About May 1907, he underwent a series of operations that went until around the end of September, 1908.

He amassed a considerable fortune from his business, but it was believed that he had spent most of it on treatments for his injuries during the last years of his life.
Bauer was 35 at his death. He was survived by his mother, who lived in Brooklyn.

Green referred to roentgenologists suffering radiation burns as “martyrs of science” to a Courant reporter on December 8, 1904.

Green would apply for a patent on x-ray tubes on November 23, 1909.

“In a German hospital in Brooklyn, NY, Saturday, John L. Bauer, formerly a member of the firm of Green & Bauer of this city, died, a martyr to science, for to the development of X-ray mechanism, which he made his life work, he owed a painful death due to burns from the unknown agency which scientist, without fully understanding, term X-rays.”
“Mr. Green is an expert electrician, and he and Bauer, working together, invented the X-ray tube with an angle target. This invention for applying the X-rays has been in use ever since.”
“Shortly afterwards, the two men invented the only successful regulator for X-ray instruments. Over this last invention, incidentally, Mr. Green is now engaged in a law-suit with a Philadelphia firm.”
“Bauer was of the opinion that if he got away from the work which head been engaged in, he would recover. On the contrary, he grew worse.”
“To tell just what peculiar property of these rays works such deadly results has baffled scientists. The work with the rays has now been rendered less dangerous than heretofore by the use of lead plates, which are apparently, to a certain degree, opaque to the X-rays.”

The regulator that Bauer and Green invented was apparently the subject of Queen & Co. v. Roentgen Manufacturing Company.

Unattributed, "Death by Inches Caused by X-rays: Inventor Bauer of the X-ray Tube Cut to Pieces as Disease Progressed," November 12, 1908, page 1.

Share this:

	0
All