Would love to hear more about your grandfather in future videos. Sounds like he was an amazing guy.

your grandfather invented the volume knob? Tesla bless your grandfather

This particular set of Geissler tubes appears to be from the 1870s to 1880s. They could be as late as the 1890s. Usually they included d asmall amount of mercury vapour, and uranium oxide in the glass. The internal tubes are usually quartz glass, the liquids can be any number of liquids from quinine to various alanines. The electrodes were usually made of platinum. The styles shown here are generally found in French manufacture, and may contain rhodamine (for red fluorescence) quinine, for blue, or various combinations thereof. Some were engineered to deliberately show stratification in the plasma with distinctive banding (dependent on internal leakage), others contained powders to recharge or reduce the pressure, and absorb contaminants. There was a run of production int he 30s as well, if I remember correctly, but these appear to potentially be quite a bit older. The most unusual geissler tubes were actually mechanical/physical electrical valves, which would divert the energy to one side of the tube or the other, dependent on the electrical 'flow' direction, using the formation of the glass itself to make the rectifying effect. The ones with red glass in the sealing surfaces (around the electrodes) are probably pre-1900.

"Martyn's Historic Discharge" PHRASING.

I think gramps would be even more impressed that we viewers are sitting at every and all corners of the Earth. Shoutout from Singapore.

Your father invented the hearing loop? That's awesome! As a deaf person (Been deaf since my birth) with Cochlear Implants I'm very thankfull for all the aid, thanks to that, I can almost hear like a normal person. Loves from Belgium!

What a wonderful heritage. The tubes might contain uranium, used for a green or yellow colour since the late 19th century. Uranium glass is fluorescent under UV. The one on the far right at 1:50 looks a little like "Vaseline glass "which typically contains uranium and is slightly cloudy. Negligibly radioactive.

Every time a video comes out on this channel I get very excited.

show this to people who don't understand science. they're all like "YEAH, SCIENCE! what does it do??" you: "nothing.. it makes pretty colors"

This man is such a legend.

Isn't it uranium glass ? It looks greeninsh and it glows under UV light with this faint green

Your grandfather must have been an amazing man, and so are you. He could have never imagined you talking and showing this to so many people, and in fact talking about science to this many people. Take pride in what you do, it's well deserved!

Finally my long search came to an end...this man is 66 years old!

7 people so far are leaking 100-year-old gas.

Dear Professor I really appreciate you sharing this about your grandfather. Please tell us more about him!

Sir Martyn, thank you for sharing the story of someone who means so much to you, and indeed, to so many people around the world. Not only are his Geissler tubes fascinating, but just imagine if he could know how many lives have been touched by his genius. My utmost respect to you. In you, his genius and enthusiasm for the world about you are quite evident!

Nice to get a bit of family history combined with such a neat little object. Lovely video.

Thank you, Sir Martyn, for sharing with us something from your family history that is special to you, your grandfather, and your family. I am very grateful to you for keeping these memories alive and also for your work in educating us about chemistry and other sciences.

Your grandfather would be proud that you have shown some of his equipment to over 300k people. Great videos! 👍

Wow, I had no idea that Professor Poliakoff had such genius ancestors. I hope he has a lot of grandchildren! Humanity needs those great genes.

Thanks so much for sharing this precious part of your family history with us, Sir P!

Excellent video! You are the best Prof. I watch this channel mainly to hear you and your (awesome) stories!

Thank you for sharing this wonderful family heirloom. I was certainly fully entertained.

A couple of the things the professor says in this video surprise me. For one, he seems to think the glass is doped with iron to make it yellow and fluorescent. It is almost certainly "vaseline glass" however, doped with uranium. A simple geiger counter test will affirm this quickly. Also, he is strangely under the impression that the determination of the gasses inside will be difficult and potentially destructive to the tube??? All the information to determine the gas or gasses inside is already there. You're looking at it. One can tell simply by observing the color alone that it must be either air, argon, helium, mercury vapor, or possibly but HIGHLY unlikely, krypton or xenon. The simplest spectral analysis even done with a handheld piece of cheap diffraction grating will immediately reveal which of these gasses it is. The lines of mercury are instantly recognizable, as are the quasi-continuous repeating bands of the many rovibrational transitions of nitrogen and oxygen molecules if it's air. All of this could be done in seconds with equipment that I'm sure his lab has around somewhere.

Thanks for another video. Very sentimental feeling all of a sudden when he mentioned the idea of years those glass tubes being 100 of years old but still able to live on in entertaining ideas. And then mentioning his grandfather was the icing on the sentimental cake. Prof Martyn : best entertainer/professor on the Interwebs.

I feel honoured and also lucky to be given the chance to take part in this interesting remembrance.

Yes Sir! There are 850,000+ subscribed to this Channel...def a big audience. I wonder if your grandfather knew Tesla (or Edison). It would be excellent to hear more about him in future videos. Thank you.

Wow, doing some background reading your whole family did amazing things. And i'm proud to say so are you Martyn. Keep it up!

i could listen to the prof all day. Very informative, and very entertaining.. Which is a very rare combination.

Excellent video!

I have been entertained as well as educated Thanks! Always enjoy these videos. I'm working my way slowly through all of them

Thank's for sharing this with us professor!

You are such an amazing person. If we all had teachers like you no one would ever drop out of school

That's so cool. Thanks for showing us that. Wish you guys made videos more often though.

Professor Poliakoff whips out his 100-year-old discharge rod--and it still works like a charm.

The videos you make will always be popular to most of us, the quality is perfect on every video from this channel.

Love these videos. Just relaxing for some reason listening to him explain things.

Thank you for this! Simply delightful and very entertaining.

A very interesting piece of equipment! It was very generous of the professor to bring these out to demonstrate them, considering they are special to him and must be quite fragile.

Thank you for sharing these with us.

Thank you for sharing with us.

thank you so much for sharing these unique artifacts with us, i love all your video's but its special things like this that make you guys top tier :)

Thank you so much Professor! I love your videos and anecdotes!

...a very poignant and heartwarming ending. Not only are the Geissler Tubes being shared with a larger audience than he could have ever imagined through means he would see as magic...they're serving as tinder for a knew generation of inventors and chemists

These are fantastic! Love your videos!

I felt a sudden connection to you right now. I work at a healthcare center here in Norway, and one of the areas I am in duty of, is hearing aid. I requisitioned a hearing loop the other day. In norwegian it is called a "teleslynge". I love Periodic Videos, and the ones featuring you, are the best of them all. Thanks.

AWESOME! I've been dying for a new episode!

Favorite video so far! Isn't it memorizing how far technology has brought us, and how quickly!

this is very entertaining. thanks for the three of you who did this video👍

Some Geissler tubes are not purely decorative, they were used with 'Lecher lines' for measuring standing UHF radio waves, looking for the points where the glow died down as zero points or 'nodes'.

Absolutely phenomenal.

It definitely entertained me. Thank you.

These are quite magical, never heard of them! Can't imagine what it must've been like for those back in the day to see them.

Always a treat to see Professor Poliakoff again. Surprized that the infamous and ominous Neil was kept off camera, somehow he seems very appropriate for Halloween season.

They are indeed entertaining :D Great video , i love watching every single one of your uploads.

Wonderful legacy to have an audience for your work 100 years later.

those look so cool! i love the colors they make!

thanks for sharing Martin! really cool!

I love your videos!! Thank you so much for sharing!!!

I read about Josef Poliakoff, a grandfather you can be proud of! Awesome! Now I even like our Prof even more!

Very entertaining indeed, thank you Periodic Tables.

This guy is absolutely delightful.

"There are measurements we might be able to do, but we might damage the tubes." Well, why not use a simple spectrograph?

Great video. Thanks for sharing this.

We are gratefull to your grandfather and you for this video!

great video. Thanks for posting !!

Professor, thank you for sharing your grandfather items.

Well sir , very impressive . I'm looking forward for more videos 😊 . May your ancestors be remembered for doing this .

Absolutely something completely valuable! Thank you very much!

Great video! thanks for sharing!

Thank you again, Sir Martyn.

Thanks to you Professor and all the team in Periodic Videos :-) Excerpt from NYRB: Tony Judt - Meritocrats "But I only ever became closely acquainted with one such person-my neighbor Martyn Poliakoff, great-grandnephew of the Poliakoff who built the Russian railways, a spiky-haired eccentric out of Westminster School who went on to secure a CBE, Fellowship of the Royal Society, and deserved renown as a popularizer of chemistry to young people. Hardly your typical toff."

The true magnificence of these contraptions is that whenever these experiments are performed, they show how beautiful orbitals can be when excited :)

Look, here's the deal. It's absolutely magnificent that this man teaches so many people so many amazing things, but.... and here's the biggie... I absolutely love him so much because he makes me smile. It's cool when someone makes learning fun. Yes yes, is there a cooler Prof on the planet? I think not. I'm sure you've heard it a million times, but Martyn Poliakoff is the epitome and complete embodiment of the art of awesome teaching.

Wow that was an amazing video. I love this channel

Those are some interesting items. Cool that they still work.

Professor, your grandfather has so far entertained over a hundred thousand people. He can definitely rest in peace. This is more than he would have expected :)

Let me first state I am not a chemist so I may be way out of line with these suggestions. Couldn't you use a spectrometer to narrow down what the gas may be? Also, is it possible to regulate the power output to see how much power it takes to start fluorescing which may give another clue? You can use an Ultrasonic Thickness Gauge to check the thickness of the glass. All of these tests are nondestructive, then all you need is to solve for what the pressure might be. Well, I hope this helps, always love your content. Thank you for posting it.

great video! missed you guys😀

Martyn Poliakoff is a treasure!

Amused by the thousands of people watching this video. Pretty sure he'd be more amused by the moving speaking picture device :D

Hello, Professor! Thank you for sharing your grandfather's antiques with us. At 3:38 the glass glows a distinct greenish yellowish color. It looks very much like the pieces of uranium glass in my collection, which give the same color when activated by UV light.

Thank you for the presentation! It is an honor to hear your insights into the scientific world.

Thank you for sharing.

your explanation is great make connections in my mind about other things

How nice of the Professor to dig these out for us all :D

They are certainly entertaining! Thank you for sharing. One geissler tube had a purple-pink colouring to the discharge very reminiscent of the novelty "plasma globes". perhaps that's a place to start your search?

So cool to see in many peoples eyes such nerdy things. I wouldn't mind seeing the Professors vacuum tube collection either. Maybe?? It would be a winner.. This man grew up around the time Bell labs invented the transistor.. The "glory days" as we are being dumbed down today it seems.. Great video of 160 year old technology which is still amazing.

I love how he casually talks about his grandfather like "oh yeah, he invented volume control and the transistor". It just makes him more awesome.

Reverse engineering the apparatus might prove as many questions and answers as the Faraday candle lecture. I'd love to hear Sir Martyn do an episode on just this. BTW I'm sure his late grandfather is as excited about the youtube audience as he was for his grandson's CBE and other titles.

Great video! Thanks for posting :)

You, professor, os definitely right! It's entertaining and capable of wakeup people for science wonders. Thanks for share it with us.

This is nostalgic to me because when I was young (nearing teens, almost 40 years ago) I went to the library often and was fascinated by books that taught science. There was one book that had various sort of DIY stuff about making high voltage experiments, including high voltage transformers and Tesla coils AND these tubes. It was fascinating but sadly my only attempt was not very successful. I attempted to make a high voltage high frequency transformer from a used car ignition transformer by stripping the cap from it so that I could access the magnetic core (laminated steel plates) to make a magnetic resonance switch to operate it in relatively high frequencies. I think I got close, but not enough, it never produced any satisfying sparks even :) And I don't think I would have had any clue as to where to get these wondrous glowing glass tubes either.

That was really cool, and it is kind of inspiring to think about how small the audience would have been back when your grandfather was still alive, compared to the audience it is receiving AS WE SPEAK!

what an awesome heritage for an awesome man

The reason they work with only one electrode 'connected' is that the tubes have a capacitance. As the supply is AC current flows in and out of the tubes and therefore they are supplied with energy which they convert into light.

I love how enthusiastic he is about chemistry

Thanks for sharing!

I find it quite amazing how Sir Martyn here is showing this stuff to us on KZfaq, and he knew and is related to a person born 140 years ago :D

As I was watching this, an alarm on my phone went off. I set it yesterday to play X's "Blue Spark". Life's freaky coincidences.