The main purpose of this book is to give a concise account of the production and properties of X-rays. This may at first sight seem a rather restricted aim, but, as the title of the book indicates, its coverage extends beyond the ‘conventional’ aspects of the subject to include other branches of physics in which X-rays play an important rôle. I have brought together several of the areas of physics in which X-rays are encountered, because it has become very evident in recent years that much of the great body of X-ray knowledge acquired several decades ago is highly relevant to other fields such as the recent developments in radioactivity, plasma physics and astrophysics.

In a book of moderate size it is not possible to give a comprehensive treatment, in depth, of the whole of X-ray physics. But I have included a reasonably full account of the continuous X-ray spectrum at low and medium energies, and have also described the production of characteristic X-rays (by electron bombardment) in sufficient detail to enable the research workers to make useful predictions about what is happening or is likely to happen in a wide variety of circumstances when electrons impinge on matter.

X-ray research necessarily involves the use of radiation detectors, and an account of some of these techniques is given.