The High-Vacuum X-Ray Tube: Technological Change in Social Context

Nature seems capricious to the savage mind; tubes do to the x-ray worker. He rests, pets, punishes, smashes tubes as the fetishist his idols. He learns to know them all by name, their temper and their capabilities. He has a number of them—the more the better. He has trained tubes, trick tubes, high-spirited, high-bred tubes as well as gentle steady tubes. … A flashy tube is worse than a hysterical woman, it is incurably useless.1