Word: lenard
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...tubes which Dr. Slack seals so thinly are Lenard Ray tubes, invented by learned Professor Philipp Lenard of the University of Heidelberg, 1905 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics. Professor Lenard's tube, devised in the 1890's when modern physics was germinating, projects cathode rays through a thin aluminum or gold window. It requires a minimum of 70,000 volts to fire those rays through the metal windows. That voltage is expensive and difficult to handle...
...Slack's Westinghouse task was to make more permeable windows. A film of glass would serve, were it stout enough to withstand the suction of the Lenard vacuum tubes. Dr. Slack rounds the end of his vacuum tube until it resembles the butt of a test tube. Then he blows the glass to gossamer thinness. A last step is to exhaust the tube. This creates a knob at the tube's end, a knob so frail that when shattered its glassy film floats in air. so stout that it is as strong as steel. Result is that a pressure...