Fitting Henry Green into the record

I won’t add competing claims for other roetgenologists – that’s a really, really deep rabbit hole – but I will note some gaps in my research that could help for future inquiries. And if you have some information to include here, please let me know!

The open question here is whether or not he collaborated with William Robb and Arthur Wolff. And, I am still making the assumption that the lab he built was for x-ray research.

The sources on Green all indicate that the link between his work with incandescent lamps and his research on x-rays was critical: his work with lamps gave him access to glassblowers and vacuum pumps that were needed to develop his own vacuum tube to generate x-rays. The record is otherwise silent on this link, but it is notable that the first report of Green using x-rays to assist a doctor took place at the Aetna Electric Company.

For all of the credit Green is given for manufacturing and improving x-ray tubes, there’s a very suspicious gap in the record before the first patent application for an x-ray tube in 1908. All that I can say for now is that Green & Bauer was “still manufacturing” x-ray tubes in 1904.

The Courant says that the first x-ray photograph taken in Connecticut was of Robert Magonigal’s leg – I didn’t include it because I haven’t confirmed it directly in a contemporary account. It would seem not to be Theodore Studley: despite George Bell’s claim, the effort to find the bullet in Studley’s leg failed.

This one is a bit more complicated – short of looking up classified ads, I’m not sure how I could determine whether Hartford doctors were using x-rays in their practices.