Crookes Tube - History

History

Crookes tubes evolved from the earlier Geissler tubes, experimental tubes which are similar to modern neon tube lights. Geissler tubes had only a low vacuum, around 10−3 atm (100 Pa), and the electrons in them could only travel a short distance before hitting a gas molecule. So the current of electrons moved in a slow diffusion process, constantly colliding with gas molecules, never gaining much energy. These tubes didn't create beams of cathode rays, only a pretty glow discharge that filled the tube as the electrons struck the gas molecules and excited them, producing light.

Crookes (among other researchers) was able to evacuate his tubes to a lower pressure, 10−6 to 5x10−8 atm, using an improved Sprengel mercury vacuum pump made by his coworker Charles A. Gimingham. He found that as he pumped more air out of his tubes, a dark area in the glowing gas formed next to the cathode. As the pressure got lower, the dark area, called the Crookes dark space, spread down the tube, until the inside of the tube was totally dark. However, the glass envelope of the tube began to glow at the anode end.

What was happening was that as more air was pumped out of the tube, there were fewer gas molecules to obstruct the motion of the electrons, so they could travel a longer distance, on average, before they struck one. By the time the inside of the tube became dark, they were able to travel in straight lines from the cathode to the anode, without a collision. They were accelerated to a high velocity by the electric field between the electrodes, both because they didn't lose energy to collisions, and also because Crookes tubes required a higher voltage. By the time they reached the anode end of the tube, they were going so fast that many flew past the anode and hit the glass wall. The electrons themselves were invisible, but when they hit the glass walls of the tube they excited the atoms in the glass, making them give off light or fluoresce, usually yellow-green. Later experimenters painted the back wall of Crookes tubes with fluorescent paint, to make the beams more visible.

This accidental fluorescence allowed researchers to notice that objects in the tube, such as the anode, cast a sharp-edged shadow on the tube wall. Johann Hittorf was first to recognise in 1869 that something must be travelling in straight lines from the cathode to cast the shadow. In 1876, Eugen Goldstein proved that they came from the cathode, and named them cathode rays (Kathodenstrahlen).

At the time, atoms were the smallest particles known, the electron was unknown, and what carried electric currents was a mystery. Many ingenious types of Crookes tubes were built to determine the properties of cathode rays (see below). The high energy beams of pure electrons in the tubes revealed their properties much better than electrons flowing in wires. The colorful glowing tubes were also popular in public lectures to demonstrate the mysteries of the new science of electricity. Decorative tubes were made with fluorescent minerals, or butterfly figures painted with fluorescent paint, sealed inside. When power was applied, the fluorescent materials lit up with many glowing colors.

In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays emanating from Crookes tubes. The many uses for X-rays were immediately apparent, the first practical application for Crookes tubes.

Crookes tubes were unreliable and temperamental. Both the energy and the quantity of cathode rays produced depended on the pressure of residual gas in the tube. Over time the gas was absorbed by the walls of the tube, reducing the pressure. This reduced the amount of cathode rays produced and caused the voltage across the tube to increase, creating 'harder' more energetic cathode rays. Soon the pressure got so low the tube stopped working entirely.

The electronic vacuum tubes invented later around 1906 superseded the Crookes tube. These operate at a still lower pressure, around 10−9 atm (10−4 Pa), at which there are so few gas molecules that they don't conduct by ionization. Instead, they use a more reliable and controllable source of electrons, a heated filament or hot cathode which releases electrons by thermionic emission. The ionization method of creating cathode rays used in Crookes tubes is today only used in a few specialized gas discharge tubes such as krytrons.

The technology of manipulating electron beams pioneered in Crookes tubes was applied practically in the design of vacuum tubes, and particularly in the invention of the cathode ray tube by Ferdinand Braun in 1897.