The “KINRADE” Relic

Ref. L12

This “relic” from Thomas Burton Kinraide (1864-1927) was kindly donated by Jeff Behary (The Turn of the Century Electrotherapy Museum) with the following description: “….It is part of the original induction coil used in Kinraide’s early high frequency apparatus. It was found casually disassembled in Kinraide’s Spring Park underground laboratory some 110 years later, with other remains of his early experiments.”

Thomas Burton Kinraide was one of the first people to take the concepts of Nikola Tesla and create marketable apparatus from them. He pioneered the first practical portable high frequency X-ray machine (“The Kinraide Coil”) shortly after Röntgen’s discovery in 1896.

The initial apparatus were made in his Spring Park Laboratory in Jamaica Plain, MA.

One of the earliest visitors to this laboratory was fellow electrotherapeutic pioneer and physician Frederick Finch Strong. Once in Kinraide’s laboratory, Strong witnessed the most powerful X-rays of that time period. Kinraide and Tesla were independently the first people to create X-rays powerful enough to penetrate the entire body, as opposed to just the hands or limbs.