Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
...Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel reported that only a few volts were required to drive electric current through the air between high-temperature platinum electrodes. From 1882 to 1889, Julius Elster and Hans Geitel of Germany developed a sealed device containing two electrodes, one of which could be heated while the other one was cooled. They discovered that, at fairly low temperatures, electric...
Link to this article and share the full text with the readers of your Web site or blog-post.
If you think a reference to this article on "Hans Geitel" will enhance your Web site,
blog-post, or any other web-content, then feel free to link to this article,
and your readers will gain full access to the full article, even if they do not subscribe to our service.
You may want to use the HTML code fragment provided below.
We welcome your comments. Any revisions or updates suggested for this article will be reviewed by our editorial staff. Contact us here.
Regular users of Britannica may notice that this comments feature is less robust than in the past. This is only temporary, while we make the transition to a dramatically new and richer site. The functionality of the system will be restored soon.