Narratives

Physics Glassware Exhibition, Basement Gallery, 2001-2: 'Assortment of Geissler tubes'

In the 1850s, H. Geissler, a German glassblower, developed a vacuum tube with sealed platinum electrodes, and improved the mercury vacuum pump. The tubes were used to demonstrate the nature of electric discharges in gases and partial vacuums, including the phenomenon of 'electro-luminescence' (fluoresescence). In the 1860s many famous scientists investigated the behaviour of ionized gases and cathode rays, which in 1895 resulted in Roentgen's discovery of x-rays. These tubes are of a variety of shapes, of different types of glass, some partly exhausted, others with different gases, while others again contain minerals. The early tubes had platinum electrodes, but these were replaced by aluminium at the turn of the century.

Other narratives:

• Physics Glassware Exhibition, Basement Gallery, 2001-2: General Label
• Inventory no. 59794 - Former Display Label

Related Objects:

• Inventory No. 15394, "Geissler Vacuum Discharge Tube, Late 19th Century"
• Inventory No. 17164, "Geissler Vacuum Discharge Tube, Late 19th Century"
• Inventory No. 18478, "Geissler Vacuum Discharge Tube, Late 19th Century"
• Inventory No. 21032, "Geissler Vacuum Discharge Tube, Late 19th Century"
• Inventory No. 24226, "Geissler Vacuum Discharge Tube, Late 19th Century"
• Inventory No. 59794, "Geissler Vacuum Discharge Tube, Late 19th Century"
• Inventory No. 67966, "Geissler Tube Vacuum Discharge, Late 19th Century"