A cathode ray tube is made of glass with a small amount of some kind of gas in it. It has metal electrodes at each end to pick up an electric current. The electrodes are named "positive” and "negative,” which were words used by Benjamin Franklin in the 1700s to describe electricity. A bright ray forms in the gas when an electric current is applied to metal electrodes. In the 1800s, an important scientist suspected that the negatively charged particles in a cathode ray were present in all atoms.