A review has been made of the development of the neon flash tube, from its introduction by Conversi in 1955, up to the present day. Particular attention is paid to the problems which arose from attempts to use flash tube arrays on accelerator experiments, namely the long sensitive and recovery times of the tubes, and the loss of efficiency at high event rates, caused by internal clearing fields. The problems arising from attempts to describe analytically the flash tube discharge mechanism are also discussed. An investigation of the decay mechanisn of the internal clearing fields has been made, which indicated that the effect may be overcome by decreasing the surface resistance of the outer wall of the flash tube. A description of a gamma ray detector, utilising flash tubes as the detecting elements, interspersed with lead absorber, is included. The energy and spatial resolutions are found to compare favourably with those of more complex and expensive detectors. The problems arising from the use of this detector in the e(^+) test beam at the Daresbury Laboratory are discussed
