Joseph John Thomson discovered that a cathode ray tube emitted charged particles with a mass 1/1800th that of a hydrogen atom. These were electrons. The usefulness of this discovery and of these particles was completely unknown at the time. Thomson himself wondered how such a small, insignificant particle could have any practical application outside of physics laboratories. Twenty years later, Thomson himself, again at a regular session of the Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution in London, gave a lecture entitled “The Industrial Applications of Electrons,” and thus electronics was born, which, I would say, did have some practical applications…
