Edward Hope Kirkby They are buried together at Waverley Cemetery. So ended a life of invention largely unrecognised as biographers of George Taylor and Archibald Shaw claimed all the credit for them for Kirkby’s endeavours. Edward Hope Kirkby was a jeweler watchmaker in Williamstown who eventually became a manufacturing electrician making systems of fire protection, in 1908 he invented and patented the first automatic sprinkler alarm. He is first recorded as experimenting with X-ray in September 1896 This is only 9 months after Roentgen presented his discovery of X-rays. He is reported as experimenting with the medical staff at Williamstown Hospital later that
Roentgen (unit) 1962 it was redefined. The CCU decided to define the SI unit of absorbed radiation in terms of energy per unit mass, which in MKS units was J/kg. This was confirmed in 1975 by the 15th CGPM, and the unit was named the "gray" in honour of Louis Harold Gray, who had died in 1965. The gray was equal to 100 rad. The definition of the roentgen had had the attraction of being relatively simple to define for photons in air, but the gray is independent of the primary ionizing radiation type, and can be used for both kerma and