Joseph Patrick Slattery

Born in 1866 in Waterford, Ireland, he traveled to Australia as a deacon in 1888, where he was ordained a priest by Cardinal Moran.

He performed mission work for the Vincentian fathers and toured Australia and New Zealand to serve the faithful.

[3][4][5] On 8 December 1891, Slattery was ordained as a Catholic priest by Cardinal Patrick Francis Moran in the college chapel and became prefect of studies.

[3][5] In 1893, Slattery installed gas lighting fixtures with incandescent burners into the study halls, almost one year before these became available in Australia.

In 1895, the college acquired a gasoline powered engine, a six-inch (15 cm) sparking coil and two Crookes tubes.

That same year the school upgraded to an oil powered engine, dynamo and storage batteries that supplied electric light to the science halls.

[2][6] In January 1896, Slattery read in local newspapers of Wilhelm Röntgen's breakthrough: “A new photographic discovery” and focused his pursuits on radiography.

He built a thirteen-inch (33 cm) induction coil, sponsored by local individuals and this permitted shorter exposure times.

In 1910, he published in the College's year book (Echoes from St Stanislaus), a paper, "Wave motion in ether".

He died of heart disease on 31 March 1931, aged 64, in Lewisham Hospital and was buried in Rookwood Cemetery at Sydney.

Not the fact that the events occurred, but the claim of who did what first, and who should receive credit for being the first in Australia to perform medical radiography.

Australia Post decided the most equitable way was to depict all three individuals on a postage stamp, issued to coincided and commemorate the 100th anniversary of Wilhelm Röntgen's discovery of X-rays.

On 7 September 1995, Walter Drowley Filmer, Sir Thomas Ranken Lyle, and Father Slattery were recognised as pioneers of X-ray technology in Australia.