This fascinating collection of early X-ray plates contains numerous examples of the typical early X-ray subjects, mostly hands.
The first set contains eleven glass plates of x-rayed hands, one of which is a child's hand and another of which is wearing a ring. One of the plates is ruined. Several of them bear small labels such as Dr Gore - 1898, 1st x Ray by H[] 1896 and [] Jany 97.
The second set contains thirteen plates, with more varied subjects. These comprise: seven adult hands, one with a signet ring, another labelled Mr Reid 21/12/96 20 min; a child's hand labelled Beatrice Harvey Dec 1898; a child's foot labelled Beatrice Harvey Age 7 28/11/96; a drawing set in a case with various instruments labelled Dec 1896; a [?]balance in a case, a key, and three [?]coins in a pouch; and two frogs, one labelled Living Frog Dec 1896. The box also has a lid which bears various nearly illegible inscriptions referring to the subjects of the plates therein.

The first X-ray images of this type were produced on 8th November 1895 by Professor Wilhelm Conrad Rntgen of the Institute of Physics at the University of Wrzburg in Bavaria. The subject of these first X-rays was the Professor's hand, produced by a Crooke's tube. The news of Rntgen's discovery caused great excitement all across Europe when first published in the Neue Friei Presse newspaper in Vienna on Sunday 5th January 1896, the first detailed account in the English press appearing on 7th and 8th January in the Evening Standard. The public's imagination was quickly fired, the new process of photography being celebrated in rhyme and cartoons in Punch by the end of the month. It was further popularised by the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, and his wife having their hands submitted to the X-rays on 1st May 1896. Towards the end of the year, advertisements for X-ray apparatus began to appear in trade pamphlets and scientific and medical journals. Initially the new photography remained in the hospitals and medical demonstration halls, but the plates offered here represent some of the earliest examples of "amateur" X-ray experiments. Such plates are rare, partly due to the simple lack of equipment with which to render the image in the first months after Rntgen's breakthrough discovery, and partly because the physical properties of the glass and the image conspire to make it difficult for such plates to survive for over one hundred years.