JJ Thomson and the electron

I was very pleased to visit the site of the old Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge. It prompted me to look up JJ Thomson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._J._Thomson He was experimenting with cathode rays. Following the chain back, it seems that the line of research started with the passing of big voltages through gases - an old-fashioned streetlight, in other words. Then they started to improve vacuums until they could remove all of the gas. They realised that they had a straight line ray. This is where Thomson came in. He was able to bend the rays with magnets and electric fields, to work out the charge-to-mass ratio. He realised that the particles were negative and smaller than an atom. The world of sub-atomic particles was born. I'm amazed by the number of Nobel laureates that he taught, including Wigton's own William Henry Bragg.