Geiger Counter - History

History

In 1908 Hans Geiger, under the supervision of Ernest Rutherford at the Victoria University of Manchester (now the University of Manchester), developed an experimental technique for detecting alpha particles that would later be used in the Geiger-muller tube. This counter was only capable of detecting alpha particles and was part of a larger experimental apparatus. The fundamental ionization mechanism used was discovered by John Sealy Townsend by his work between 1897 and 1901, and is known as the Townsend discharge, which is the ionization of molecules by ion impact.

It was not until 1928 that Geiger and Walther Müller (a PhD student of Geiger) developed the Geiger-Müller tube which could detect more types of ionizing radiation and it became a practical radiation sensor.

Once this improved sensor was available, Geiger counter instruments could be produced relatively cheaply because the large output pulse required little electronic processing to give a count rate reading, which was a distinct advantage in the thermionic valve era due to valve cost and power consumption.

Modern versions of the Geiger counter use the halogen tube invented in 1947 by Sidney H. Liebson. It superseded the earlier Geiger tube because of its much longer life and lower operating voltage, typically 400-600 volts.

Read more about this topic:  Geiger Counter

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.
    —J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)

    A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.
    David Hume (1711–1776)

    There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.
    Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)