Invited Paper VT-MoM1
History of Widely Used Vacuum Gauges and the Variations and Motivations That Occurred Along the Way: How Did We Get Where We Are?

Monday, October 19, 2015, 8:20 am, Room 230B

A historical development of low vacuum, high vacuum and UHV gauging will be presented, covering the beginnings of capacitance diaphragm gauges, Pirani gauges including modernization in recent decades, triode gauges, Schulz-Phelps gauges, Bayard-Alpert hot cathode ionization gauges from their start to their modernization, various cold cathode discharge ionization gauges, and the spinning rotor gauge. The thread of design motivations that occurred over decades will be followed from not being able to measure the likely base pressures, to a drive for accuracy and stability over the full ranges of the gauges, to finally in recent decades, a priority for gauges to have lifetimes which better withstand the environments of processing chambers with aggressive gasses. The limitations of all these gauge technologies will be discussed. The history of methods for studying behavior of charged particles in electric fields before computer simulation, during its beginnings, and finally using the SIMION program, will be shown. Historical development of gauge calibration methods and standards will be presented, starting from mechanical methods, through bare-bones first principles methods, their evolution to more precise methods, and to finally some modern-day new physical standards for measuring pressure.