Dr. Macintyre's X-Ray Film

1896 Documentary 1 minute 1 second Directed by John Macintyre

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About Dr. Macintyre's X-Ray Film

The picture is a short loop of X-ray images. A frog's knee and limbs move under the beam. An adult heart and digestive tract follow, the organs outlined with bismuth. A title card calls it the first X-ray cinematograph and says Dr. Macintyre showed it at the London Royal Society in 1897. Another card says each adult picture was taken in a 300th of a second, so a series can show one cycle of the heart.

Cast & crew

More about Dr. Macintyre's X-Ray Film

John Macintyre, a Glasgow Royal Infirmary doctor, made the film. Luke McKernan dates the demonstration to the Glasgow Philosophical Society in April 1897, including a Ladies' Night for a mixed audience. The frog's limbs were moved mechanically under a Crookes tube. The camera lens was removed, the body was wrapped in lead foil, and a lead diaphragm with a small aperture let the rays hit the film. McKernan writes that Macintyre does not seem to have continued the work after 1897.

Themes

  • A frog under X-rays
  • A beating heart
  • Medical diagnosis
  • X-ray
  • frog
  • heart
  • bismuth
  • Glasgow
  • Royal Society

Background

Wilhelm Röntgen announced X-rays in 1895. Macintyre's loop is the following step McKernan describes: those rays recorded as a moving picture.

Look

There is no lens. A lead diaphragm and lead foil on the camera let Macintyre record the X-rays themselves as they passed through the frog.

Technique

McKernan calls the April 1897 Glasgow demonstration the first joining of X-rays and cinematography. Each adult frame on the title card is a 300th of a second.

Music

Silent. The copy carries title cards and no score.

Preservation

Luke McKernan writes that the film survives.

Notes

  • The surviving title card dates the Royal Society showing to 1897. Catalogs often date the film 1896.
  • McKernan writes that Macintyre was the first person, in April 1897, to put Röntgen's X-rays and the cinema together.
  • He chose a frog because the body is flat and the skin is thin, so the exposure could stay low.
  • He showed the film as a loop.
  • Similar X-ray experiments were made the same year by Roux and Balthazard in France.

Scenes

  • The frog's knee joint moves in the X-ray image.
  • The title card between the heart and the stomach explains the 300th-of-a-second exposures.

Influenced by

  • Wilhelm Röntgen's X-rays, announced in 1895

Also available

  • Wikimedia Commons (Dr. MacIntyre's X-Ray film.webm)