Rate of Spread of Discharge Along the Wire of a Geiger Counter

Abstract

IN 1939, one of us¹ made a determination of the half-life of thorium C′ as 2 × 10^â7 sec., using a coincidence technique with variable resolving time. It was found, however, that delays were occurring in the system of the same order of magnitude, and these could only be attributed to the Geiger counters. The outbreak of war prevented any further work until now; but in the meantime there have been published several important papers on the subject of Geiger counters^2,3,4. In particular, Stever⁵ observed that a small bead on the wire of a self-quenching counter prevented the discharge spreading down the wire, and reported that Brode had shown that the discharge did not travel instantaneously.