DETECTIVE WORK BY X-RAYS.

Waikato Times, Volume 94, Issue 14769, 7 October 1921, Page 7

DETECTIVE WORK BY X-RAYS.

— * X-rays are rapidly becoming the busiest detective of the day. No longer confining their services to medical and surgical scJeneo, they are being employed in solving important commercial and industrial problems, and are remorselessly unerring in prying beneath the surface of things. A Daily Post (London) representative was shown articles apparently sound that were lorced to confess to material defects under the X-rays. These rays, it was slated, are already used in business houses for the examination of boots and shoes, golf balls, insulating compounds, chocolate, cigars, furs, diamonds, pearls, metals, and leather. In the factory, boots come under X-rays as they pass along a travelling belt, an inspector noting results in a mirror. Should a finished article have been left with, say, clinching pins in it, a pull on a lever throws it amongst Hie rejects. Golf balls arc scrutinised for the rejected of those with faulty centres. Insulaiing compounds made of rubber, and the like, are lested to see that they arc free of bits of metal, and similarly Hie X-rays ensure that metallic grit from machinery dues not get into chocolate. The rays are fatal to a microbe which explodes cigars, and lo moth eggs in furs, and they can tell more about diamonds and pearls than the expert can sec for himself. We have standardised a commercial machine in which articles can be placed for examination by anyone, said Air J. AV. Mason, managing director of XRays, Limited, of Terringlon Place, London, W.G. For instance, it enables a smoker to look right through a pipe before purchase, and 'it will show how bristles are wired in a brush, or a blade is fitted into a knife handle. An exhibit may be placed on a shelf within the cabinet, the rays switched on, and the result seen in a mirror. An adapted contrivance in which the foot is placed is used in scientific boot fittings. In big pig-killing houses of Ihe United States Hie pork comes under X-rays for Hie detection of disease germs, inspectors being occupied all day in watching screen pictures, so that any unfit meat may be scrapped. The French police find an X-rays picture of a suspect’s hand a useful adjunct to the fingee print. Th,e rays delect the spurious “old master” amongst paintings, and in the Customs (hoy nose out contraband in uncanny fashion.