Editing Geiger–Müller tube (section)

===External quenching===
External quenching, sometimes called "active quenching" or "electronic quenching", uses simplistic high speed control electronics to rapidly remove and re-apply the high voltage between the electrodes for a fixed time after each discharge peak in order to increase the maximum count rate and lifetime of the tube. Although this can be used instead of a quench gas, it is much more commonly used in conjunction with a quench gas.<ref name="knoll"/>

The "time-to-first-count method" is a sophisticated modern implementation of external quenching that allows for dramatically increased maximum count rates via the use of statistical signal processing techniques and much more complex control electronics. Due to uncertainty in the count rate introduced by the simplistic implementation of external quenching, the count rate of a Geiger tube becomes extremely unreliable above approximately 10<sup>3</sup> counts per second. With the time-to-first-count method, effective count rates of 10<sup>5</sup> counts per second are achievable, two orders of magnitude larger than the normal effective limit. The time-to-first-count method is significantly more complicated to implement than traditional external quenching methods, and as a result of this it has not seen widespread use.<ref name="knoll"/>