Mónico Sánchez, inventor of the portable X-ray and high-frecuency current devices

Mónico Sánchez Moreno was born on May 4, 1880 in the small town of Piedrabuena in Ciudad Real. He was the youngest of the four children of a humble marriage. His father worked in a small brick and tile factory and his mother washed other people's clothes in the river. In 1900 Piedrabuena was a small town with 3,810 inhabitants, 75% of its inhabitants being illiterate.

At the age of fourteen, Mónico Sánhez moved to Fuente del Fresno to work as a delivery boy and later to San Clemente (Cuenca), where he worked as a shop assistant. Five years later he would have his own business, which he would sell two later, with whose profits, he moved to Madrid at the age of 21 to study electrical engineering without having a baccalaureate.

In Madrid, the first thing he learned about at the university was a student strike that forced the temporary closure of the School of Industrial Engineers. Despite the inconvenience, Sánchez Moreno did not change his plans and began a correspondence course in electricity in English, a language he did not know and which was taught by "The Electrical Institute of Correspondence Instruction" in London, whose director was Joseph Wetzler, who moved around by Thomas A. Edison.

With Weltzer's recommendation, Sánchez Moreno made the decision to emigrate to New York. On October 12, 1904 and with only 60 dollars in his pocket, he embarked in Cádiz. He only knew written English he had never heard of. In New York he began working as a draftsman's assistant but soon enrolled in the Institute of Electrical Engineers, a vocational training center. And, soon, he fulfilled his wish to go to the university, Columbia, for a course in electrical engineering that lasted a few months. It was the time of the war of currents between supporters of alternating current sponsored by Nikola Tesla and defenders of direct current sponsored by Thomas Alva Edison.

In those years there was a major problem with X-ray machines that were fixed, expensive, very heavy and bulky. Mónico Sánchez began working as an engineer in a company called Van Houten and Ten Broeck Company dedicated to the application of electricity in hospitals. Sánchez Moreno, based on some of Tesla's developments, developed, in 1909, a revolutionary Portable Device for X-Rays and High Frequency Currents. He reduced the iron of the transformer using a frequency of 7 MHz instead of 50 MHz, with which the device was much smaller and its weight of 10 kg, being able to be transported in a suitcase. The consumption was reduced to three amps and it worked with the electrical network without the need for generators

The Collins Wireless Telephone Company, owned by the New York engineer Frederick Collins, was developing wireless telephony in New Jersey with up to 100 km range with mobile phones, whose carbon microphone heated up and ended up burning after a quarter of an hour of communication. In order to diversify his business, Collins purchased the patent for his portable X-ray apparatus from Mónico Sánchez, for $500,000, which would be renamed The Collins Sánchez Portable Apparatus and named him chief engineer.

In 1909 he participated in the III Electricity Fair, held in Madison Square Garden in New York, in a stand next to the companies of Thomas A. Edison and Nikola Tesla.

Collins' company launched a major sell-off, suggesting that mobile telephony in cars, trains and boats was already a reality. Four executives, including Collins, ended up in jail, for alleged fraud in their demonstrations in public places, limited to brief conversations so that the phones would not get hot.

He terminates the contract and returns to New York, where, alone, he creates the Electrical Sánchez Company. In 1910 he took part in the V National Congress of Electrology and Radiology in Barcelona, and contracts came up for him to sell as many devices as he manufactured. He creates the European Electrical Company, although his X-rays were still made in the US.

Mónico Sánchez, backed by a significant fortune, decided to return to Spain, to his hometown, at the age of 32. Piedrabuena did not have electricity and Sánchez installed a power station supplied by coal that came from the mine in carts pulled by mules. Thanks to her, all the inhabitants of his town were able to have electricity in their homes.

Employing the majority of its inhabitants, in 1913 Mónico Sánchez installed the Sánchez Electrical Laboratory in Piedrabuena, to manufacture his portable X-ray apparatus, an ideal machine for the Great War that was about to break out. He wins a tender for the supply of 60 devices to be transported in the field ambulances of the French Army. In this way, more than a million x-rays could be performed on the soldiers. Some of Mónico Sánchez's devices are on display at the A Coruña and Madrid offices of the National Museum of Science and Technology.

The beginning of the Civil War in Spain cut short the activities of Sánchez Moreno since he was attacked by both sides. The Republicans seized his laboratory and his house and when they did not find him they took his assistant, Juan Mota, whom he never saw again. The Falangists later accused Mónico Sánchez of Mota's murder, although they did not bring him to trial. The international isolation and the autarchic policy of the government that repeatedly denies the essential import permits to import material and spare parts for his laboratory left the activity of his company at a minimum.

In addition, misfortune settled in his life since his wife and five of his six children died. These fatalities did not prevent his X-ray machines from continuing to be sold until 1961, the year of his death. That year his company was closed forever.

Other of the important contributions of Mónico Sánchez were the visors for the radioscopies, the cassettes for the X-rays, the ozone inhaler, the protective tubes and the electric scalpel.

Throughout his life, Mónico Sánchez Moreno received various international and national awards. Several universities awarded him Honoris Causa Doctorates, he also received the Ciudad Real Gold Medal in 1914 and the Barcelona International Exhibition Medal in 1929.

Mónico Sánchez Moreno died on November 6, 1961 in the same town where he was born, Piedrabuena in Ciudad Real.