Geissler tube
Tubo de Geissler
- Date
- 1857 · confidence high
- Place
- Bonn, Germany
- Credited to
- Heinrich Geissler
- Field
- Matter & energy
What it is
A sealed, partially evacuated glass tube containing rarefied gas with an electrode at each end, which glows in colour when high voltage is applied. A precursor of modern gas-discharge tubes, and essential to the discovery of cathode rays and the electron.
Developed in 1857 by glassblower and physicist Heinrich Geissler, a collaborator of Julius Plücker in Bonn.
What it led to
- research into cathode rays by Plücker, Crookes and others
- decorative and signage neon tubes
- discharge tubes used as high-voltage sensors in physics