In 1855, the German glassblower and instrument maker Heinrich Geissler invented the Geissler tube in Bonn, a sealed glass tube containing rarefied gas that glowed with colorful light when an electrical current was passed through it. These tubes, handcrafted in Geissler's Bonn workshop, were the first gas-discharge lamps and the precursors to neon signs, fluorescent lights, and cathode ray tubes. Their beautiful, eerie glowing colors made them popular both as scientific instruments and as decorative objects in Victorian homes.

The Geissler tube's ethereal, glowing light fascinated the Symbolist poets who emerged in the 1880s and 1890s, providing a visual metaphor for the luminescent, otherworldly qualities they sought in poetry. The tube demonstrated that electrical force could produce beauty as well as power, enriching the literary imagination's vocabulary of light, color, and illumination. In French Symbolist poetry, particularly the work of Stephane Mallarme and Arthur Rimbaud, the idea of hidden forces producing visible, shimmering effects paralleled the Symbolist doctrine that poetry should evoke rather than describe.