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20 SMT007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2025 tant discovery that society should be able to take advantage of it as soon and as freely as possible. And he was right. As early as 1896 (a year aer the discovery of the X-rays in Munich), physicians at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire were taking X-rays of their patients. at's an astounding adoption time for a new technology! Consider this took place before emails, fax machines, TV, or even radio! Remember that those Crookes tubes were in dozens of laboratories world- wide, so when word went out that they cre- ated these weird invisible rays that pene- trated objects—well, you can imagine every- one wanted to see it for themselves. Another prominent figure of the 19th cen- tury was Alfred Nobel (Figure 3). His claim to fame is less humanitarian: He invented dynamite in 1867. e invention was initially used for construction projects but quickly became used in military applications. Nobel made a lot of money with his patents related to exploding things. Not particularly happy with his legacy, in 1895, he learned about the German scientist who gave up a fortune to help society benefit from his invention. Soon aer that, Nobel directed his will to estab- lish and fund the Nobel prize. Who was the first recipient of the Nobel Prize? Yes, Wilhelm Roentgen. The Modern X-ray Machine Since Roentgen's discovery in 1895, X-ray machines have been used in various applications, from the inspection of seeds to car chassis—and everything else in between. To cover even a frac- tion of these applications would fill several books, so we'll focus on the X-ray inspection of electronic assemblies. We designed this book to follow the same process we use when designing an X-ray machine. e first step is to define the X-ray imaging train needed, namely the proper X-ray source and sensor. e second step is to determine how the sample will move in and out of the machine and how the sample will move inside the machine. Lastly, we need to decide who (or what) will make pass-and-fail decisions based on the tests performed on the X-ray images. Imaging e first step in defining the best X-ray inspection system for your application is to determine whether the machine will pro- duce images that will reveal the defects in your samples. e following two steps in this process (motion and decision) are irrelevant if you can't see what you need to see. e question we are oen asked is, "How do I get a good X-ray image?" We thought this was an excellent question to help us guide this book. Once you understand the princi- ples of X-ray inspection—which you'll need to do so you know how to get a good X-ray image—the applications of the technology Figure 2