| Summary: | The subject of oxygen atoms has a long history dating back to Becquerel. In 1859, he described a ‘long-lived luminous species’ produced when an electric current was passed through oxygen. In 1891, during an investigation of electrical discharges through various gases at low pressures, Thomson observed a luminous glow in oxygen which persisted ‘some considerable time’ after the electrical discharge had been interrupted. This glow was subsequently called the ‘oxygen afterglow’, but is now generally referred to as ‘air afterglow’. In the years between 1859 and 1900, a large number of investigators round a variety of afterglows from discharged air of unknown purity.
|
|---|
