title: Johann Wilhelm Hittorf and the material culture of nineteenth-century gas discharge research.
abstract: In the second half of the nineteenth century, gas discharge research was transformed from a playful and fragmented field into a new branch of physical science and technology. From the 1850s onwards, several technical innovations-powerful high-voltage supplies, the enhancement of glass-blowing skills, or the introduction of mercury air-pumps- allowed for a major extension of experimental practices and expansion of the phenomenological field. Gas discharge tubes served as containers in which resources from various disciplinary contexts could be brought together; along with the experimental apparatus built around them the tubes developed into increasingly complex interfaces mediating between the human senses and the micro-world. The focus of the following paper will be on the physicist and chemist Johann Wilhelm Hittorf (1824-1914), his educational background and his attempts to understand gaseous conduction as a process of interaction between electrical energy and matter. Hittorf started a long-term project in gas discharge research in the early 1860s. In his research he tried to combine a morphological exploration of gas discharge phenomena-aiming at the experimental production of a coherent phenomenological manifold--with the definition and precise measurements of physical properties.
authors: Department of History, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Grueneburgplatz 1, 60323 Frankfurt, Germany. falk.mueller@em.uni-frankfurt.de
authors: Falk
authors: F
authors: Müller
mesh_terms: D055984:Cathode Ray Tube / Q000266:history; D004563:Electrochemistry / Q000266:history*; D005740:Gases / Q000266:history*; D005858:Germany; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D017136:Ion Transport
chemical_list: D005740:Gases