Samuel Barbour (1860 – 3 June 1938) was an Australian chemist, photographer and X-ray pioneer in the colony of South Australia.
The individuals had already either been experimenting along similar lines to Wilhelm Röntgen with Crookes tubes and such, the physicists or scientists, or were actively associated with electrical work, the electricians, which made them particularly receptive to the technical appeal of the new science of X-rays.
[1] After the early investigative work of Thomas Ranken Lyle, William Henry Bragg, Joseph Patrick Slattery, and others, almost all medical men were satisfied with soliciting the services of the external X-ray man when necessity arose for skiagraphs to be produced.
As the hospitals started to be equipped with X-ray apparatus and installations under the care of radiologists and radiographers, the medical men began to accept the eventuality of the new technology.
The family had 5 sons, William J., Arthur J., Samuel, Frederick W. and Charles Ernest, and 4 daughters, Charlotte A., Eleanor, Mary and Margaret.
[4] By February 1888, Barbour was residing at King William-street in Adelaide, South Australia as reported in the local Police Gazette.
[6][7] On 8 January 1895, Barbour presented a paper at a meeting of the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia where he proposed standards for eucalyptol concentrations in eucalyptus oil and mentioned the Faulding process.
On 29 May 1896 at Adelaide, Bragg demonstrated before a meeting of local doctors the application of "X-rays to reveal structures that were otherwise invisible".
The tube was attached to an induction coil and a battery borrowed from Sir Charles Todd, Bragg’s father-in-law.
The induction coil was utilized to produce the electric spark necessary for Bragg and Barbour to "generate short bursts of X-rays".
[11][12] On 27 January 1897, Barbour placed the following advertisement in the Evening Journal with the heading Skiagraphy or Photographs by Rontgen Rays.
“SKIOGRAPHS taken of various parts of the human body, showing the location of needles, shot, &c., and the details of fractured bones.