Description
This discharge tube was originally made and used in the Cavendish Laboratory of Experimental Physics in the 1920s by George Crowe. The physicists' work would not have been possible without the expertise and patience of the Laboratory's technical staff. They created, set up, and maintained the sometimes perilously fragile apparatus.

This glass tube carries a handwritten label:
"‘Xenon
Made Aug 1925
GACrowe"

George Crowe, the son of a Cambridge boat-builder, joined the Cavendish as a boy in 1907. He retired as Principal Assistant in 1959. Crowe learned glass-blowing from C.T.R. Wilson, and helped Wilson build his 1911 Cloud Chamber. In 1919, he became Ernest Rutherford's personal assistant. Calm, highly-skilled, and ready to try anything, he was the perfect foil to the creative and tempestuous Rutherford.

Rutherford's research on radioactivity relied on delicate glass vessels such as these. They were handmade by Crowe, emptied with a vacuum pump, and usually filled with the unstable gases given off by radioactive substances. Crowe needed skin grafts as a result of dealing with X-rays and radium, and lost the tip of one of his fingers.

26/02/2025
Created by: Hannah Price on 26/02/2025