page_title: Gustav Peter Bucky
section_title: Early life and career
hierarchical_section_title: Gustav Peter Bucky / Early life and career
caption_attribution_description: English: The Grenz ray machine was used for radiation therapy on the skin. It was invented by German radiologist Dr Gustav Bucky (1880-1963), who had discovered Grenz waves (low energy radiation waves) in 1925. Radiation therapy treatment was used extensively during the early 1900s. It involved passing ionising radiation through the body to treat certain skin disorders and conditions such as rheumatism. The Grenz ray machine was made by German company Siemens Reiniger during the 1930s. It was used for superficial skin therapy. This means the rays did not pass deep into the body, but worked on a surface level. Manufacturing details in German, French and English show the machine was intended for European-wide export. maker: Siemens Place made: Germany Medical Photographic Library Keywords: X-Rays; x-ray machine
context_page_description: Gustav Peter Bucky was a German-American radiologist who made early contributions to X-ray technique. The Bucky diaphragm and the subsequent Bucky-Potter grid, devices that prevent scattered X-ray particles from reaching the X-ray film, are named for him.
  Bucky spent significant portions of his career in both Germany and the United States. He was close friends with Albert Einstein and shared a patent with him for a self-adjusting camera.
context_section_description: Bucky was born in Leipzig. He wanted to become an engineer, but his parents steered him toward medical school. He studied medicine in Geneva and Leipzig, graduating from medical school in 1906 after completing a thesis on the mechanisms of the movement of paratyphus from lymph and blood vessels to the gastrointestinal tract.
  Since the mid-1890s, physicians had been struggling with a factor that limited the usefulness of X-rays: When X-ray particles hit part of a patient's body, secondary particles were released, scattered and hit the X-ray field, contributing to blurry X-ray images. In 1913, Bucky invented a system of two plates with grids on them. One plate was placed between the X-ray beam and the patient, and the other was placed between the patient and the film. The grids ensured that the secondary particles stayed in columns rather than scattering across the X-ray field. The Bucky diaphragm reduced the blur of X-ray images, but it caused grid lines to appear on the films.
  Bucky made a presentation to the German Roentgen Society about his new invention and he secured patents in both the U.S. and Germany. Bucky came to the U.S. in 1923, and he was the seventh physician granted an honorary New York state medical license without being required to take the licensure examination. However, after World War I, forfeiture laws affected citizens of the Central Powers and caused Bucky to lose the rights to his patent, so he missed out on any earnings that he could have received for his invention of the Bucky diaphragm. An American radiologist, Hollis E. Potter, modified the grids from Bucky's invention, making them movable so that the lines did not show up on the X-ray image.
caption: The Grenz ray machine, used for radiation therapy on the skin, was invented by Gustav Peter Bucky, who had discovered Grenz waves (low energy radiation waves) in 1925.
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