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Vintage Nixie Tubes and Clocks
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Even though Nixie tubes resemble vacuum tubes in appearance, they actually have more in common with neon signs. Both Nixie tubes (introduced at a trade show in 1955) and vacuum tubes (an early example is the Geissler tube, invented in 1857) use...
Even though Nixie tubes resemble vacuum tubes in appearance, they actually have more in common with neon signs. Both Nixie tubes (introduced at a trade show in 1955) and vacuum tubes (an early example is the Geissler tube, invented in 1857) use cathodes, which are slender lengths of electrically charged wire. In vacuum tubes used to power amplifiers, radios, and other vintage electronics, the cathodes are designed to produce heat to create a flow of electrons. In Nixie tubes, the cathodes are designed to be illuminated. This is accomplished when the neon gas sealed inside its surrounding vacuum tube is excited by a length of charged wire, the cathode, causing it to glow. When these cathodes are bent and curled into the numbers 0 to 9, that glow reads as numerical information, be it time or anything requiring counting or measurement.
The roots of Nixie tubes date to a pair of 1934 patents submitted by a German immigrant living in Ohio named Hans Boswau. Beyond the known technologies of vacuum tubes and the use of electricity to charge gas to cause it to light up, the patents envisioned for Boswau's "glow indicator" specified that the tube be filled with cathodes in the shapes of the numbers 0 to 9, stacked on top of each other to save space. Thus, vacuum tubes filled with charged number-shaped cathodes and neon gas could be used as counters, clocks, and other types of indicators. Boswau's never did anything with his patent, probably because its use was a bit ahead of its time. But when the transistor came along in 1947, suddenly there was a new need to display all sorts of on-the-fly calculations and numerical information. Boswau's invention fit the bill.
First, of course, someone had to figure out how to capitalize on this essential piece of technology. That someone was the Burroughs Corporation, a manufacturer of typewriters, adding machines, calculators, and, beginning in the mid-1950s, computers. Because Burroughs had no in-house expertise in vacuum tubes and electronic numerical displays, it went out and bought it. To this end, Burroughs acquired a company called Haydu Brothers, whose beam-switch counter, marketed as the Trochotron, would form half the foundation of the Nixie. The other half arrived in the form of a former National Union Radio engineer named Saul Kuchinsky, who’d help design and build a numerical version of the Trochotron, the Inditron. Burroughs' "glow indicator tube" was designated "Numerical Indicator Experiment No. 1,” which, when shortened to NIX1, sounded like Nixie.
For a decade and a half, Nixies were used as clocks and numerical indicators by the likes of NASA, the military, and Wall Street. But in the early 1960s, an even newer technology, the light emitting diode, or LED, was being developed. By the 1970s, LEDs would supersede Nixies due to their smaller size, lower cost, and chameleon-like ability to work efficiently in far more use cases than Nixies. Since then, though, Nixies have a gained a small but enthusiastic following for their steampunk aesthetic and defiantly retro appearance, which has spurred boutique manufacturers such as Dalibor Farney in Czechoslovakia to create several models of upscale electronic clocks.
Continue readingEven though Nixie tubes resemble vacuum tubes in appearance, they actually have more in common with neon signs. Both Nixie tubes (introduced at a trade show in 1955) and vacuum tubes (an early example is the Geissler tube, invented in 1857) use cathodes, which are slender lengths of electrically charged wire. In vacuum tubes used to power amplifiers, radios, and other vintage electronics, the cathodes are designed to produce heat to create a flow of electrons. In Nixie tubes, the cathodes are designed to be illuminated. This is accomplished when the neon gas sealed inside its surrounding vacuum tube is excited by a length of charged wire, the cathode, causing it to glow. When these cathodes are bent and curled into the numbers 0 to 9, that glow reads as numerical information, be it time or anything requiring counting or measurement.
The roots of Nixie tubes date to a pair of 1934 patents submitted by a German immigrant living in Ohio named Hans Boswau. Beyond the known technologies of vacuum tubes and the use of electricity to charge gas to cause it to light up, the patents envisioned for Boswau's "glow indicator" specified that the tube be filled with cathodes in the shapes of the numbers 0 to 9, stacked on top of each other to save space. Thus, vacuum tubes filled with charged number-shaped cathodes and neon gas could be used as counters, clocks, and other types of indicators. Boswau's never did anything with his patent, probably because its use was a bit ahead of its time. But when the transistor came along in 1947, suddenly there was a new need to display all sorts of on-the-fly calculations and numerical information. Boswau's invention fit the bill.
First, of course, someone had to figure out how to capitalize on this essential piece of technology. That someone was the Burroughs Corporation, a manufacturer of typewriters, adding machines, calculators, and, beginning in the mid-1950s, computers. Because Burroughs had no in-house expertise in vacuum...
Even though Nixie tubes resemble vacuum tubes in appearance, they actually have more in common with neon signs. Both Nixie tubes (introduced at a trade show in 1955) and vacuum tubes (an early example is the Geissler tube, invented in 1857) use cathodes, which are slender lengths of electrically charged wire. In vacuum tubes used to power amplifiers, radios, and other vintage electronics, the cathodes are designed to produce heat to create a flow of electrons. In Nixie tubes, the cathodes are designed to be illuminated. This is accomplished when the neon gas sealed inside its surrounding vacuum tube is excited by a length of charged wire, the cathode, causing it to glow. When these cathodes are bent and curled into the numbers 0 to 9, that glow reads as numerical information, be it time or anything requiring counting or measurement.
The roots of Nixie tubes date to a pair of 1934 patents submitted by a German immigrant living in Ohio named Hans Boswau. Beyond the known technologies of vacuum tubes and the use of electricity to charge gas to cause it to light up, the patents envisioned for Boswau's "glow indicator" specified that the tube be filled with cathodes in the shapes of the numbers 0 to 9, stacked on top of each other to save space. Thus, vacuum tubes filled with charged number-shaped cathodes and neon gas could be used as counters, clocks, and other types of indicators. Boswau's never did anything with his patent, probably because its use was a bit ahead of its time. But when the transistor came along in 1947, suddenly there was a new need to display all sorts of on-the-fly calculations and numerical information. Boswau's invention fit the bill.
First, of course, someone had to figure out how to capitalize on this essential piece of technology. That someone was the Burroughs Corporation, a manufacturer of typewriters, adding machines, calculators, and, beginning in the mid-1950s, computers. Because Burroughs had no in-house expertise in vacuum tubes and electronic numerical displays, it went out and bought it. To this end, Burroughs acquired a company called Haydu Brothers, whose beam-switch counter, marketed as the Trochotron, would form half the foundation of the Nixie. The other half arrived in the form of a former National Union Radio engineer named Saul Kuchinsky, who’d help design and build a numerical version of the Trochotron, the Inditron. Burroughs' "glow indicator tube" was designated "Numerical Indicator Experiment No. 1,” which, when shortened to NIX1, sounded like Nixie.
For a decade and a half, Nixies were used as clocks and numerical indicators by the likes of NASA, the military, and Wall Street. But in the early 1960s, an even newer technology, the light emitting diode, or LED, was being developed. By the 1970s, LEDs would supersede Nixies due to their smaller size, lower cost, and chameleon-like ability to work efficiently in far more use cases than Nixies. Since then, though, Nixies have a gained a small but enthusiastic following for their steampunk aesthetic and defiantly retro appearance, which has spurred boutique manufacturers such as Dalibor Farney in Czechoslovakia to create several models of upscale electronic clocks.
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