A plasma globe or plasma lamp (also called plasma ball, dome, sphere, tube or orb, depending on shape), is (usually) a clear glass orb filled with a mixture of various noble gases with a high-voltage electrode in the center of the sphere. Plasma filaments extend from the inner electrode to the outer glass insulator, giving the appearance of multiple constant beams of colored light (see corona discharge and electric glow discharge). Plasma globes were most popular as novelty items in the 1980s.
The plasma lamp was invented by Nikola Tesla after his experimentation with high-frequency currents in an evacuated glass tube for the purpose of studying high voltage phenomena, but the modern versions were first designed by Bill Parker. Tesla called this invention an inert gas discharge tube.
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Famous quotes containing the word globe:
“It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)