Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Geißler (26 May 1814 in Igelshieb – 24 January 1879) was a skilled glassblower and physicist, famous for his invention of the hand pumped Geissler mercury vacuum pump in the mid-1850's and in 1857, the Geissler tube, made of glass and used as a low pressure gas-discharge tube; these two inventions were critical technologies leading to the discovery of the electron.[2]: 67 

Heinrich Geissler
Heinrich Geissler
Born26 May 1814
Died24 January 1879 (1879-01-25) (aged 64)
NationalityGerman
Known forGeissler tubes
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
1862 Geißler discharge tube with holder in the Teylers Instrument Room. In 1856, his brother Wilhelm Geissler had worked together with Van der Willigen, the future (1864) conservator of the Physical Cabinet of Teylers Museum. After that, Heinrich Geissler made his well-known glass discharge tubes in Bonn.[1]

Geissler descended from a long line of craftsmen in the Thüringer Wald and in Bohemia.[3] He found work in different German universities, eventually including the University of Bonn. There he was asked by physicist Julius Plücker to design an apparatus for evacuating a glass tube.

Plücker owed his forthcoming success in the electric discharge experiments in large measure to his instrument maker, the skilled glassblower and mechanic Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Geissler. He learned the art of glassblowing in the duchy of Saxe-Meiningen.... He finally settled down as an instrument-maker in a workshop of his own at the University of Bonn in 1852.[3]

The Geissler tube was used for entertainment throughout the 1800s and evolved around 1910 into commercial neon lighting. Advances in Plucker and Geissler's discharge tube technology developed into the Crookes tube, with which the electron was discovered in 1897, and in 1906 into the amplifying vacuum tube, the basis of electronics and long-distance communication technologies like radio and television.

Geissler was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1868.[3]

References and articles

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  1. ^ "Gas discharge tube with exchangeable holder — Teylers Museum". www.teylersmuseum.nl. Retrieved March 15, 2024.
  2. ^ Pais, Abraham (2002). Inward bound: of matter and forces in the physical world (Reprint ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press [u.a.] ISBN 978-0-19-851997-3.
  3. ^ a b c Per F. Dahl, Flash of the cathode rays: a history of J.J. Thomson's electron. CRC Press, 1997, pp.49–52 .
Publications
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