Bay Electron Multiplier
date: label: Date made
content: ca. 1940
name: label: maker
content: Bay, Zoltan
notes: label: Description
content: The electron multiplier is a type of particle detector that allows the counting of single electrons. If an electron strikes an appropriate metallic surface, it will cause more than one so-called secondary electrons to be emitted. If these in turn fall on another electrode, more electrons are released. These can strike a third electrode, releasing still more electrons, and so on, through as many stages as desired, and in this way the signal of the arrival of a single electron can be amplified, or “multiplied,” to the point where it can easily be detected by a conventional amplifier.
label: Description
content: This device was developed by Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian-American inventor, and others in the 1930s, (see EM.319180) with the aim of using it in a television system. It has the great advantages of extremely rapid action and short resolving time, characteristics that make it more useful in many ways than other detectors of charged particles, such as ionization chambers and the well-known Geiger-Mueller tube. In Hungary, the physicist Zoltan Bay experimented further with the electron multiplier before World War II, working to make it a detector for charged particles in physics experiments.
label: Description
content: Bay later came to the United States; the electron multiplier shown here was probably built in this country but is essentially similar to his pre-war models. It consists of two multipliers mounted together. The series of successive curved electrodes (“dynodes”) can be seen inside one of them.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Modern Physics
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: EM.N-08906
label: accession number
content: 258418
label: catalog number
content: EM.N-08906
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Detector, Bay Electron Multiplier
label: Object Name
content: tube, multiplying, electron, vacuum
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 32 cm x 13 cm x 16 cm; 12 5/8 in x 5 1/8 in x 6 5/16 in