William Nicholson Jennings

William N. Jennings, First Photograph of Lightning, taken September 2, 1882, Philadelphia

William Nicholson Jennings (1860–1946) was a photographer active in Philadelphia from the 1890s. He conducted experiments with color photography and artificial lightning, helping in the development of photographic flash.

In 1890 together with Arthur W. Goodspeed he was photographing electric sparks and brush discharges at the University of Pennsylvania, and tried to use a Crookes tube. On February 22nd he noticed disks of unknown origin on one of his plates but nobody could explain them, and the image was forgotten. Only after the discovery of X-rays by Roentgen did Goodspeed and Jennings realize that this was an accidental X-ray photo.^[1][2][3]

References

1. Goodspeed, Arthur W. (February 1896). "Experiments on the Röntgen X-Rays". Science. 3 (59): 236–237. doi:10.1126/science.3.59.236. ISSN 0036-8075.
2. Scientific American (April 11, 1896); as cited in Ptak, J. F. (Nov 2019) "On Not Discovering X-Rays (1890)".
3. Walden, T L (December 1991). "The first radiation accident in America: a centennial account of the x-ray photograph made in 1890". Radiology. 181 (3): 635–639. doi:10.1148/radiology.181.3.1947073. ISSN 0033-8419. Retrieved 11 November 2024.

External links

• William Jennings in The Franklin Institute's Case Files online exhibit Contains biographical information about Jennings, information about his work in the science of lightning and images of Jennings's original photographs