Abstract
AT a meeting of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow on December 22, 1880, I gave a very brief preliminary account of some experiments that I have been making, along with Sir William Thomson, with vacuum tubes. We have sealed up English and German glass tubes with very high vacuums, but without any electrodes; and have obtained very remarkable luminous effects both with the Ruhmkorf coil and also working by means of electrostatic induction. Using an ordinary frictional electric machine, and applying one end of a long vacuum tube to the prime conductor; while the other end of the tube is held in the hand, the tube becomes charged as a double Leyden jar in the following way:—one end of the tube, next to the prime conductor,—outside positive, inside negative; the other end—insid positive, outside negative. This can be shown by the gold leaf electroscope. The charges seem to be very high and the glass is very frequently perforated. Indeed it is difficult to work with the electric machine in tolerably good order without perforating the glass. While this double Leyden jar is slowly discharged, by removing, part by part, the charges from the outside of the tube, beautiful luminous effects are observed very different from those seen in the ordinary vacuum tubes. We have also obtained curious effects by heating the middle region of the tube so highly that it becomes a semi-conductor.
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BOTTOMLEY, J. Experiments with Vacuum Tubes. Nature 23, 218 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/023218b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/023218b0
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