Visitors to theLondon Science Museumthey have chosen asmost significant scientific advance? from our past, present and future “to theX ray machine. The invention has thus surpassed other candidates such as penicillin, the DNA double helix or the capsule of theApollo 10. The vote was held as part of various events organized by the Science Museum to celebrate its centennial.
The British and president of the Royal College of Radiologists, Andy Adam, was “delighted” to learn of the results. “The X-ray machine has revolutionized medical practice and this technology has advanced so much that we are already reaching thewas from the ‘transparent patient’“Adam commented.
X-rays were discovered by the physicistWilhelm Conrad Röntgen, which in 1901 received the Nobel Prize for its discovery. Thanks to him, doctors “were able to see bones and other structures inside living patients for the first time, instead of basing their diagnoses only on symptoms, samples and surgery,” the organizers of the vote explain.
In addition to the X-ray machine, the list of inventions proposed by the London Science Museum included theFord Model T automobile, the first mass-produced family vehicle; thesteam engine, which unleashed the industrial revolution; thegerman rocket V2, the first ballistic missile that was the precursor to the space rocket; theTelegraph; the firstmodern locomotive, baptizedStephenson’s Rocket; and the computerACE pilot, the first built in Great Britain.
