Antique X-Ray Tubes and Accessories

Dr. HAKIM’S COLLECTION

Actively involved in Radiology for over fifty years, I have succeeded in building a personal collection of antique x-ray tubes and accessories, hopefully contributing, very modestly, to the safeguard of a precious patrimony.

The collection started timidly some forty years ago with an early large bulb Coolidge tube donated by a friend, and grew very slowly to its present size by more donations and acquisitions from different sources, locally and from all over the world. I am happy to dedicate it, first of all, to the memory of all the pioneers in Radiology and all the martyrs of radiation, and to all those who brought the art of Radiology to where it stands.

But, with the emerging alternate imaging technologies, the field of Radiology proper is shrinking. So I also dedicate this collection, as a legacy, not only to colleagues and x-ray technologists wherever they may be, but also, and particularly, to future generations of Radiologists, or “Medical Imagists”, to whom, one day, the x-ray tube may become no more than a curiosity of the past.

I am happy to show in the following pages some items of the collection, with some comments.

Zahi N. Hakim, MD