One Hundred and Twenty Years Ago Today J.J. Thomson announced his discovery of the electron at the Royal Institution in London.

Without a good understanding of electrons, which play an essential role in electricity, magnetism, and conductivity (in addition to more fundamental gravitational, electromagnetic, and weak force interactions), we would never have made the advances we made in modern technology. For example, even though, based on the work of Goldstein and Hittorf, Sir William Crookes developed the first cathode ray tube back in the 1870s without knowing what they were, it was electrons that made them work — as determined by J.J. Thomson and colleagues through experiments they conducted in 1896 (based on the work of Lorentz and Schuster).

The visual computing revolution started with the cathode ray tube, and, moreover, as there is no computing without electricity, and no electricity without electrons, without the discovery of electrons, and a good understanding of what they enabled, we wouldn’t be where we are today.