Crookes tube: A Crookes tube is an early experimental electrical discharge tube, invented by English physicist William Crookes and others around 1869-1875, that consists of a partially evacuated glass container of various shapes, with two metal electrodes, one at either end. When a high voltage is applied between the electrodes, cathode rays (electrons) travel in straight lines from the cathode to the anode. This term was also used for the early cold cathode X-ray tubes that evolved from the experimental Crookes tubes and were used until about 1920. Crookes and several others used this device to discover the properties of cathode rays, culminating in J. J. Thomson's 1897 identification of them as the negatively-charged particles that were later named electrons. Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays using a Crookes tube in 1895.
In "The Shunned House," the narrator presumes that one of the sorts of device bearing this name could be used as a weapon against incorporeal creatures but is unsuccessful in employing it in this way.
This is cool as! I was just googling this to see what type of 'weapon' it is as per the Lovecraft book. Cheers!
ReplyDelete