A Crookes tube is an early experimental discharge tube with partial vacuum invented by English physicist William Crookes and others around 1869–1875, in which cathode rays, streams of electrons, were
Experimental Crookes tube belonging to Wilhelm Röntgen, c. 1890, at Gedächtnisstätte Würzburg (Rontgen Memorial), Würzburg, Germany
A Crookes tube: light and dark. Electrons (cathode rays) travel in straight lines from the cathode (left), as shown by the shadow cast by the metal Maltese cross on the fluorescence of the righthand glass wall of the tube. The anode is the electrode at the bottom
William Crookes and his glowing tubes gained renown, as shown by this 1902 caricature in Vanity Fair. The caption read "ubi Crookes ibi lux", which in Latin means roughly, "Where there is Crookes, there is light"
Crookes X-ray tube from around 1910
A vacuum tube, electron tube, thermionic valve, or tube is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric potential difference has been applied.
Later thermionic vacuum tubes, mostly miniature style, some with top cap connections for higher voltages
Operating tubes in an audio power amplifier, the hot cathodes emitting their distinctive red-orange glow
Illustration representing a primitive triode vacuum tube and the polarities of the typical DC operating potentials. Not shown are the impedances (resistors or inductors) that would be included in series with the C and B voltage sources.
US WWV radio station signal generator using vacuum tubes, 1943