The X-ray tube was designed and manufactured by E. Machlett & Son who were specialists in scientific glass instruments. The American company, which was established in New York 1897, began as a single shop and soon grew into an internationally recognized firm. The Machlett X-ray tube was patented in April 1934; one of its tubes, at the University of Melbourne's School of Physics, is from 1937. These X-ray tubes may have been used by Professor T.H Laby’s X-ray group, which was a priority research topic there. This interest was sparked by the appointment in 1889 of Professor T. R. Lyle. Lyle, who was head of the school until 1915, is thought to have been the first person in Australia to have taken an X-ray photograph iii. A photocopy of this photograph can be found in the School of Physics Archive. For this particular experiment, Lyle actually made his own x-ray tube. His successor, Laby, continued to work with X-rays. During the 1920s he worked on the X-ray spectra of atoms and in 1930 he, along with Dr C. E. Eddy, published "Quantitative Analysis by X-Ray Spectroscopy" iv . Also with Eddy Laby produced the paper "Sensitivity of Atomic Analysis by X-rays". Laby went on to have an X-ray spectrograph of his own design manufactured by Adam Hilger Ltd.