Detection Sets

Abstract

This chapter discusses the pre- and postwar development and applications of photomultipliers tubes, particularly how researchers used the devices to measure extremely faint light fluxes and how the match between photomultipliers and wartime electronics helped them in that endeavor. Photomultipliers sensitive to single photons were developed before WWII. However, the technique of single photon counting, which relied on the combination of efficient and low-noise photomultipliers with high-resolution electronic circuits, was developed only in the 1950s and early 1960s, when researchers gradually learned to use the unique sensitivity and time resolution of photomultipliers to measure exceedingly small light fluxes, down to single photons. The development of photon-counting instrumentation was motivated by and grounded on quintessential Cold War research, especially in nuclear and solid-state physics.