Credit: © The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.11058

    Illumination of a Crookes Tube

    Date
    1879
    Creator - Organisation
    West, Newman & Co, Lithographers
    Object type
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (print): 284mm
    width (print): 210mm
    Subject
    Content object
    Description
    Three figures showing lighting effects in a vacuum tube during experiments conducted by William Crookes. The ‘Crookes Tube’ was a glass container through which high voltage could be applied within a partial vacuum. It was a type of cathode ray tube, projecting what J.J.Thompson (1856-1940) would later characterise as electrons. In the paper associated with this illustration, Crookes suggested that: “The phenomena in these exhausted tubes reveal to physical science a new world – a world where matter may exist in a fourth state…”, what would now be termed plasma.

    Figure 11 from the Royal Society Bakerian Lecture “On the illumination of lines of molecular pressure, and the trajectory of molecules”, by William Crookes. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol.170 pt.1 (1879) pp. 135-164.

    Sir William Crookes (1832-1919) chemist and science journalist was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1863. He served as President of the Royal Society 1913-1915.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
    Powered by CollectionsIndex+/CollectionsOnline