A process for making clean gas discharge tubes

At last year´s meeting, the vacuum sealing of titanium metal to forsterite ceramic by reactive alloys was described by J. E. Beggs. These techniques have been extended to the construction of high performance gas discharge tubes in a very simple and inexpensive manner. Tube assemblies of forsterite ceramic and titanium are outgassed and then sealed together in an atmosphere of the noble gas with which they are filled. The gettering action of the hot titanium results in a very pure gas filling. Examples of gas tubes constructed by this new process include voltage regulators, voltage reference tubes, and thyratrons.