Welcome to Daily TWiP, your daily dose of all the holidays and history we couldn’t cram into The Week in Preview.

If you’re really looking to make an impression on your guests, consider featuring an x-ray machine at your next social function. Anyone who attended the first public demonstration of the x-ray machine, given by H.L. Smith today (Jan. 18th) in 1896, likely talked about it for weeks afterward.

X-rays were accidentally discovered by Wilhelm Rontgen in November of 1895 and were given their name because X represented an unknown and the source of radiation was not known at the time. Rontgen took the first x-ray image on Jan. 12, 1896, a photograph of his wife’s hand. It displayed her bones as well as a silhouette of her wedding ring.

Scientists and the common man alike were fascinated by Rontgen’s photograph. Although there appears to be scant information available on Smith’s x-ray machine demonstration (which took place less than a week after the photograph was taken), we imagine it was quite well attended.

In spite of concerns that x-rays could be inappropriately used to see through people’s clothing or into their houses, x-rays were soon extolled as a miracle of science and a unique form of entertainment. Circus audiences, for example, were previously content to watch the feats of the performers and perhaps bring home a souvenir postcard. Now, they stepped up to x-ray machines to see their own skeletons and departed with x-ray images of their hands bedecked with silhouetted jewelry.

The public use of x-ray machines continued into the 1940s and ‘50s, especially in shoe stores, where an x-ray device known as a pedoscope supposedly helped patrons determine whether their shoes fit properly. It was more of a way to attract customers, however, than an accurate method of measuring.

Once the harmful effects of x-rays became known, x-ray machines were declared the territory of science and removed from public places. Nowadays, if you want a souvenir x-ray of your hand complete with rings and bracelets, you have to schedule an appointment with your doctor – but they’ll make you take off your jewelry first.

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– Teresa Santoski