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Re: single wire electrode
Posted By: SVP Neon Equipment In Response To: Re: single wire electrode (Eric R)
Date: Thursday, 12 August 2010, at 8:21 p.m.
> Thank you for all the help. Does anyone know
> any kind of approx. time frame that neon
> electrodes went from one wire to two?> I hope everyone is busier than us.
A little history and trivia: Single wire lead glass electrodes were sometimes used before the advent of tubulated electrodes. IMO it was a money saving effort. Back then materials were more valuable than wages. Once the tubulated electrode was invented it obviously required two wires. I'm not sure exactly when tubulated electrodes became available, but two-wire lead glass electrodes were available at least as early as 1935, and most likely before then. Dumet wire was also available before that time as it was developed for vacuum tubes (radio tubes) as well as lead glass electrodes, both of which were made of lead glass. Dumet was used because it has a COE that closely matches that of soft glass. The other characteristic of dumet is the glass will easily 'wet' to the wire and form a reliable vacuum tight seal.
During the first hey-day of neon there were a lot of companies offering their "magical" rendition of electrodes, some of which looked unusual (as has been mentioned here) but did not perform any better than the next brand. At one time there was even an electrode specifically made for mercury repairs. When heated it released hydrogen into the tube, which chemically combined with the mercury that was absorbed into the powder and liberated it so it could be "pumped out". (Can you imagine what the tree huggers would do with an idea like that these days?) Some older benders may have learned to do mercury repairs by pumping the tube once and then back filling it with either natural gas or propane and bombarding a second or third time. They didn't usually know why it helped clean the mercury out of the tube, they just knew it worked. It's because natural and propane gas contains a fair amount of hydrogen, so it worked in the same way that the hydrogen electrodes did.
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