I was chewing on a problem with some tungsten cathodes in a pressure gauge. I knew that guys like Irving Langmuir had probably solved that problem a long time ago. After all, we have been putting incandescent tungsten in vacuum systems for more than a century. That started me on a search for old books.
Langmuir (center) in 1922 in his lab at GE, showing radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi (right) a new 20 kW triode tube. Wikipedia.org. Langmuir worked at General Electric from 1909–1950, where he advanced several basic fields of physics and chemistry, invented the gas-filled incandescent lamp, the hydrogen welding technique, and was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in surface chemistry.
My search took me to an unassuming, yet interesting place; www.tubebooks.org. This is a vast collection of out of print materials that have been scanned into PDF format. I did find some juicy books for vacuum tube technology and got some great insights into the problems of the day.
The site’s heading proclaims, “Herein you will find a collection of vintage engineering texts, vacuum tube datasheets, and other obsolete information, presented free of charge and without annoying advertisements.”
Understanding Modern Vacuum Technology 