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How the Geiger Counter started to crackle: Electrical counting methods in early radioactivity research

The Geiger (or Geiger–Müller) Counter is probably one of the most widely known scientific instruments of our times. It stands for protection against radioactivity and, at the same time, for the fear of it. In the postwar period, it came to be a sixth sense for society and was a “watchdog of the Atomic Age” [1]. The Geiger–Müller Counter was one of the first electrical devices that could detect α-, β-, and γ -radiation equally well. In the spring of 1928, Walter Müller (Fig. 1b) developed the first prototype counter in Kiel, Germany, supervised by his former doctoral advisor, Hans Geiger (Fig. 1a). The events, on which the development of the “most sensitive organ of humanity”1 was based, had their origin before the Great War. In the early 20th century, several methods had already been developed for electrically counting radiation events. Geiger had been involved in the development of some of these devices, for which lateral cuts are displayed in Fig. 2. Geiger had been an assistant to Rutherford in Manchester since 1906. Together, they had developed an ionization chamber for the electrical counting of α-particles in 1908 (Fig. 2a). In 1912, Geiger returned