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Thyratron
A thyratron is a type of gas-filled tube used as a high-power electrical switch and controlled rectifier. Thyratrons can handle much greater currents than similar hard-vacuum tubes.
Due to the high conductivity of plasma, a thyratron is capable of switching higher currents than vacuum tubes which are limited by space charge. Glow thyratrons were optimized for high gas-discharge light output or even phosphorized and used as self-displaying shift registers in large-format, crawling-text dot-matrix displays. One miniature thyratron, the triode 6D4, found an additional use as a potent noise source, when operated as a diode (grid tied to cathode) in a transverse magnetic field.
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