That was the beginning of the long and "turbulent" time of that luminescence researching. And the luminescence is called "cathode rays" (named by Eugen Goldstein).

Julius Plucker (1801-1868),in 1858, remarked that as the pressure of the gas in the tube decreased, the length of the luminescence by the cathode increased. The direction of the lines of cathode rays is the same as the magnetic field lines' one. He also noticed that when the cathode was made of platinum then the part of the glass tube near the cathode got covered with that metal. Whereas the glass in front of the cathode began to illuminate. The location and the shape of that illumination was due to the magnetic field.

Sir William Crooks (1832-1919), built up Varley's conception. Crooks conducted many important experiments using self-made vacuum tubes. He noticed that the thin foil on which the beam of cathode rays was focused got hot. That proved that the rays, whatever they were, transferred energy. The second thing he discovered was that the beam of rays exerted some force - transferred momentum. He demonstrated that using the paddle wheel which he put inside the vacuum tube. The paddles were in such direction as to be influenced by the rays' incidence. The wheel could roll in the tube when there was some force influencing the paddles (the friction was minimised). The tube laid horizontally. The wheel began to move when cathode rays illuminated the paddles. For Crooks that movement proved that the cathode rays influenced the paddles with some force. But, in 1903, in his book "Conduction of Electricity Through Gases" Thomson proved that the force with which cathode rays influenced the paddles was not strong enough to induce such a fast movement. So Thomson proved that the movement was really induced by the radiometric effect - the paddles were not uniformly heated - The heated and unheated sides of the paddles received different momentum from the particles of the gas in the tube. The only thing proven by Crooks experiment was that cathode rays heated the paddles. But in the eighties the experiment was treated as the proof for cathode rays transferring momentum.
was studying the structure of cathode rays and the reason for them being induced. In the model he created, the particles of the tail gas in the tube collided with the cathode and that way got negatively charged. After that the particles were repulsed by the cathode, getting high speed. That was because the cathode and the particles were the same charged. The particles, repulsed perpendicularly with the respect to the cathode, passed through "the cathode dark space" and then induced illumination by collisions with other particles. Such model explained the most of cathode rays' features and phenomena.

Tait yet in 1880 noticed a big mistake in the Crooks theory although the theory developed in the fall of 70s of the 19th century. Tait noticed that if cathode rays were really fast moving particles then the light waves emitted by them should be characterized by Doppler shift. They weren't.

Wiedemann and the two other German scientists - Eugen Goldstein and Heinrich Hertz - created a different model explaining features of cathode rays. They came to the opinion that cathode rays couldn't consist of particles but were of wave structure. Their conclusion was caused by the fact that all features of cathode rays were the same as of electromagnetic waves. The difference laid only in two things: the first was that waves didn't undergo aberration in the magnetic field as cathode rays did, and the second was that the waves were emitted in all directions with respect to the surface and the cathode rays were emitted only perpendicularly with respect to the surface of the cathode. The authors of the theory stated that the differences could be explained by some unknown features of the ether and by the electrical nature of the rays origination.

And so in the second half of the 19th century there were two models describing cathode rays. Both of them explained some phenomena and had trouble with some other ones. The scientists differed in their opinions and broke into two groups - the first one believing in the corpuscular model and the second one in the wave model being the right one. There were many interesting experiments conducted to prove which of the hypotheses was right. The experiments made some more features of cathode rays known.
    One of the authors of the wave model - Eugen Goldstein - conducted some interesting experiments to prove his theory. He found out that at the given residual pressure in the vacuum tube the distances between the collisions of the electrified particles (the Crooks' particles) colliding the gas particles should be (according to the theoretical calculations) many times shorter than the observed "Crookes dark space". Then as Crooks said - the dark space was created where the collisions didn't proceed. What Goldstein also remarked was that the distance travelled by cathode rays from the cathode to the end of the vacuum tube was more than 150 times longer than the gas particles' mean free path calculated theoretically. The probability that any Crooke's particle would cover that distance without collision is like 1 to 10⁶⁵ ! By Goldstein only waves could cover that distance not getting scattered, and creating a fluorescing spot on the end of the tube.
    Another important experiment conducted by Goldstein proved that there was really no Doppler shift of the light caused by cathode rays. He constructed a L - shaped vacuum tube. In that tube both the A and the B electrodes could act as a cathode. When the A one was the cathode the spectroscope should record the light of the particles getting close (the Doppler shift should occur) When the B one was the cathode the spectroscope recorded light was caused by the particles moving perpendicularly with the respect to the spectroscope (there should be no Doppler shift). Whereas Goldstein changing the function of the cathode between the A and B electrodes noticed no change of the spectrum. If cathode rays really consisted of the particles being the source of the light then according to the results of the experiments they should move not faster than 23 km/s.

Artur Schuster, who was English was one of the most important sympathisers of the corpuscular theory for cathode rays. In his opinion not the moving particles were the source of light but the immovable particles of the gas with which the particles of rays collide. That is why, as he said, the Doppler shift didn't occur. Also the created by Schuster model of the particles was different; the atoms of the gas dissociated for the positive and negative parts. The positive particles were collected by the cathode and the negative parts were repulsed from it - they created the beam of cathode rays. He conducted also the experiment where he estimated the maximum and minimum limits of the q/m. (where q is the charge, m. is the mass of the hypothetical particle).

Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894) tried to refute the corpuscular model of cathode rays. The aim of his first experiment was to prove that cathode rays can be created perpetually (constructing a special power supply he created constant voltage between the electrodes). With such supply the pulsation (noticed before by other scientists) did not occcure - the rays were emitted perpetually (under the limit of the measuring error). He was of the opinion that the result could be the point against the corpuscular theory for the rays.
Another aim of his experiments was to prove that the trajectory of the cathode rays movement didn't have to overlap with the direction of the flow of current. He constructed a machine in which the electrodes were perpendicular. The beam of the cathode rays went perpendicularly with the respect to the cathode and the current flowed from the cathode to the anode (as the picture shows). The value and the direction of the flow of current he calculated using a small magnetic needle hung down inside the machine. After conducting the experiments he came to the opinion that it was true that the trajectory of the cathode rays movement didn't have to overlap with the direction of the flow of current.
In the next of his experiments he was trying to prove that cathode rays didn't transfer any charge. So he made a new machine. It is shown on the picture below. The system consisted of a vacuum tube with the cathode and anode inside. Cathode rays emitted at the cathode are passing through a small slot in the anode and through a wire net (the net has connections with the anode, and its task was to screen the rest of the tube from electrode influence - electric field was only between the anode and the cathode). Cathode rays going out from the space between the electrodes were flowing through the rest of the tube and falling on its end. The tube was put inside the sensitive electrometer to detect the charge. If the cathode rays in the tube were transferring any charge the electrometer should detect that. Whereas Hertz noticed only some small, irregular swings of the pointer. His conclusion was that these were secondary effects and that there was no charge, by which the particles could be characterised, was detected.

In 1891 Hertz noticed that cathode rays can pass through a thin layer of metal. He covered a glass shield which contained uranium with a thin gold foil. Cathode rays activated the uranium containing glass for illumination. When the rays fell on the layer of gold the glass began to undergo fluorescence. He noticed that the phenomena didn't occur when there was also a thin layer of mica covering the gold.
Cathode rays could not only go through gold but also as Hertz showed it through silver, aluminium and alloys of gold or silver and tin, zinc or copper.