How was the electron discovered?

DISCOVERY OF ELECTRON

Let us travel back to an era, this was the period when Faraday had discovered Faraday cell. It was proven that when two opposite charges, high potential collides a spark is produced followed by a sound. At that time natural phenomena like lightning, thundering and extreme change of weather were considered as an act of God and its hard to convince orthodox religious people about these as a physical phenomenon because at that time priest were considered as a supremo of a society. But the story is quite different here at that time there used to be two groups people one side of religious orthodox people and another side of innovative, radical (scientist) people.

Scientists say these all are natural phenomena but others group says it is the Gods decision if he gets angry then these kinds of events occurred. There was a scientist called Benjamin Franklin it was said that he performed a kite experiment to prove lightning is just a physical phenomenon. He tied a metallic rod in the thread of kite.

He had chosen a day where there is a possibility of rainfall. He went to the top of a church and flew a kite after a while due to thundering, he got shocked (because of the transfer of charges from high altitude). Immediately he rang the bell of the church to inform people but no one accepted because it is said that at the time of lightning if high voltage shocked is accompanied by anyone there is no chance of survival.  Again there comes a  person whom we called Thomson. He challenged the traditional groups if I proved lightning as a physical phenomenon you should treat me as a God. He performed a simple experiment as shown below.

A vacuum tube with high voltage cell was taken where the negative side is connected with the cathode and positive side was connected with the anode.

The pressure was maintained low in the presence of inert gas in order to match the atmospheric criteria of high altitude. It was observed that when the switch of the battery was on Cathode rays(electron) traveled from cathode to anode flows. The phenomenon was observed with spark followed by sound exactly like of thundering.  After this experiment, He became Sir J.J Thompson.

He further investigated those rays and concluded the following points

• Cathode rays traveled from cathode to anode as it forms a shadow in anode by keeping obstacles inside the tube. 
  

• It has mass as well as momentum because it rotates paddle wheel kept inside the tube. 

• It emits normally from the surface.
• It posses a negative charge as it deflected towards positive plates. 

• It is deflected by an electric and magnetic field. 

His specific charge to mass ratio was experiment was turning point to science. He was awarded Nobel prize in physics for recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases" in 1906.