The Flicker Effect: Its First Century
2026 marks the centenary of the term “Flicker Effect”, which was later superseded by the term flicker-noise. The term Flicker Effect first appeared in W. Schottky’s article “Small-Shot Effect and Flicker Effect” (Physical Review, 28), which was published on July 1, 1926. However, the article had already been received by the editors in 1925 — the same year in which J. B. Johnson’s article “The Schottky Effect in Low Frequency Circuits” (Physical Review, 26) was published. Johnson discovered that at low frequencies, the measured noise of vacuum tubes significantly exceeded the level of shot noise predicted by theory. Schottky’s article was devoted to explaining these results