At very high currents, practical batteries will give even less capacity than predicted from a fixed exponent.
Before the invention of semiconductors, rectification at high currents involved serious losses.
All of these gave excessive forward voltage drop at high currents.
Neon plasma has the most intense light discharge at normal voltages and currents of all the noble gases.
At sufficiently high currents an incandescent anode spot may also be formed.
Efficiency tends to reduce at low currents, but indicators running on 100 μA are still practical.
The input stage was governed by Widlar current source which allowed operation at low currents.
It has little effect at low currents but severely reduces voltage at high currents.
At lower currents, the area of the electrodes covered by the glow discharge is proportional to the current.
The four-transistor version of the circuit has extended linearity for operation at high currents.