History
In U.S. Patent 0,514,170 ("Incandescent Electric Light", 1894 February 6), Nikola Tesla describes a plasma lamp. This patent is for one of the first high-intensity discharge lamps. Tesla used an incandescent-type lamp globe with a single internal conductive element and excited the element with high voltage currents from a Tesla coil, thus creating the brush discharge emanation. He gained patent protection on a particular form of the lamp in which a light-giving small body or button of refractory material is supported by a conductor entering a very highly exhausted globe or receiver. Tesla called this invention the single terminal lamp, or, later, the "Inert Gas Discharge Tube."
The Groundstar style of plasma globe was created by James Falk and marketed to collectors and science museums in the 1970s and 1980s.
The idea of the popular product sold throughout the world today was invented by Bill Parker in 1970 as an undergraduate student at MIT.
The technology needed to formulate gas mixtures used in today's plasma spheres was not available to Tesla. Modern lamps typically use combinations of xenon, krypton and neon, although other gases can be used as well. These gas mixtures, along with different glass shapes and integrated-circuit-driven electronics, create the vivid colors, range of motions and complex patterns seen in today's plasma spheres.
Read more about this topic: Plasma Globe
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