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This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute.

X rays are so common today you probably never stop to think about them. They help check a broken wrist, a sprained¹ ankle, the state of our teeth. But a little more than a century ago, x ray machines provided a revolution in medicine, allowing doctors to look inside the body. And now scientists in the Netherlands have gotten a chance to look at how the original technology functioned.

A first-generation anatomical imaging x ray machine was built in the Netherlands in early 1896. Advances to the technology came quickly, and that first machine was relegated² to an old warehouse³. Then a year ago, a Dutch radiologist got his hands on the machine and dusted it off. He and a colleague tested it using a cadaver⁴ hand. They published their research in the journal Radiology.

They found that an x ray image that requires just 21 milliseconds today would have taken 90 minutes in 1896. And the radiation exposure would have been 1,500 times greater than modern technology’s. Early x ray operators and researchers thus often suffered burns and other maladies. The scientists wrote that the images they produced with the ancient machine were severely⁵ blurred—but still awe-inspiring.

Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I’m Cynthia Graber.