There were also electrical dangers.

An uninsulated
and unprotected wire carried a high
voltage current to the discharge tube which
led to injuries to both patients and clinicians.
In 1917, Henry Fuller Waite, Jr. patented the
design for an x‐ray unit that eliminated the
exposed high voltage wire. General Electric
introduced the Victor CDX shockproof dental
x‐ray unit about a year later.
All x‐ray demonstrations on human
patients initially used large glass plates for
recording the images. It was not until 1919 that
the first machine‐wrapped dental x‐ray film
packet became commercially available. It was
called regular film and was manufactured by
the Eastman Kodak Company. Now that x‐ray
film was small enough to place inside a
patient’s mouth, how were patients supposed
to hold it in place and keep it steady? To overcome
both these problems, Dr. Kells produced
his own rubber film holder with a pocket in it
for holding the film. The side of the film holder
was made of an aluminum plate and the
wrapped film was placed in the pocket. With
the patient’s mouth closed, the film holder
was held in place by the opposing teeth. He
selected one of his dental assistants to be his
subject. This person is regarded as being the
first living person in the United States to have
experienced a dental x‐ray exposure. She sat in
a dental chair with the film holder in place
with her face placed up against the side of a
thin board. In this manner, she was able to
hold perfectly still for the required time.
Unbeknownst to Dr. Kells at the time, using
the thin board acted as an x‐ray filter that
helped to prevent his assistant from receiving
a radiation burn to her face from the prolonged
exposure. Filters eventually would become a
standard feature in all modern x‐ray units.