Introduction

Peter Galison's chapter in this volume correctly summarizes the history of the development of the flash-tube hodoscope and the spark chamber. However, books and survey articles that describe the development of the flash-tube hodoscope and also the spark chamber refer to the historically incorrect review by Arthur Roberts presented at the spark-chamber symposium held 7 February 1961 at the Argonne National Laboratory. Because, for some reason, the article I wrote in 1959 with Sigenori Miyamoto was completely ignored by the researchers of cosmic-ray and particle physics outside of Japan, I would like to present here the precise history of that phase of the development of the discharge (spark) chamber.

In our work, Miyamoto and I recognized that the localization of discharges in the flash tubes depended on the values of E/p and on the time duration of applied high-voltage pulses, and we raised the possibility of a new triggerable track detector, using gaseous discharges illustrated with photographs that would show the discharge columns along the cosmic-ray trajectory. I should emphasize that this observation was the starting point of the discharge (spark) chamber and the transition from flash tubes. Copies of the article were mailed to the relevant institutes and laboratories outside of Japan from the Institute for Nuclear Study (INS), University of Tokyo. The 1957 report was cited in the reference list of our article on the discharge chamber.

Introduction of flash-tube apparatus in extensive air-shower experiments at INS

The INS, at the University of Tokyo, was founded in 1955 as the interuniversity research center for nuclear physics and cosmic-ray physics.