Father and Son Jointly Announced the Discovery of Röntgen Rays in Two Consecutive Press Articles – Revisited

It is generally omitted that the press article announcing the discovery of Röntgen rays on the 5(th) of January 1896 was followed by a second article published two days later in the same Viennese newspaper Die Presse under the same heading. While the initial article was composed hastily by the editor in a journalistic style and contained no information on the nature of the new rays, the second publication was partly composed by the son of the editor, a physicist, who informed on some of the basic physical properties of the Röntgen rays.