The Nixie Tube Story: The Neon Display Tech That Engineers Can’t Quit

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/dawn-of-electronics/the-nixie-tube-story-the-neon-display-tech-that-engineers-cant-quit

by sohkamyung • 8 years ago

86 27 8 years ago

spectrum.ieee.org

raphlinus2• 8 years ago

I used a Nixie tube as an example in my presentation on the evolution of digital typography [0]. I actually brought a nixie clock with me, which was a nice visual aid.

[0] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/14o7vtyxz79Xto4JeDFcr...

svat• 8 years ago

This presentation was wonderful, thank you! Is there a video by any chance?

Offtopic: I notice it doesn't mention (my favourite) Knuth's Metafont, an unfortunate dead-end in the history of digital typography. And I used some scans of yours in answering (and understanding) a question on TeX.SE a while ago (https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/361722/48); thanks for that as well.

raphlinus2• 8 years ago

Glad you liked it! Unfortunately there was going to be a video but it didn't happen for technical reasons. I'd love to have the opportunity to do another spin of that talk.

Of course I had to pick and choose, and Metafont is near and dear to my heart, but since the audience for this was mostly humanities rather than a more technical crowd, it didn't make the final cut.

tecleandor• 8 years ago

Great!

Appart from nixies, I also love VFDs ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_fluorescent_display) , but, as of today, the only options seem to be Noritake (pretty nice quality in my little experience), and Matrix Orbital (can't talk about them).

There are some Noritakes which are pin-compatible with hd44780 controllers, so I've used them to substitute older LCD displays, and they look great!

vidanay• 8 years ago

VFD reminds me of growing up in the 80's when the only use for LCD was cheap solar calculators and Casio wrist watches.

Nixie tubes just make me feel warm and tingly.

frandroid• 8 years ago

And amateur fishing sonar screens...

HeyLaughingBoy2• 8 years ago

I have a couple of 20 character VFDs with a serial-to-HD44780 interface I bought about 10 years ago and still haven't used for anything useful. They are power hogs, and with bright blue LED displays so cheap now, essentially obsolete, but I simply can't bring myself to throw them out. I just love the look.

Maybe I should use them in a Z-80 project ;-)

bitwize• 8 years ago

Part of the reason why nixie tubes enjoyed a resurgence around 2000 was Final Fantasy VII, which was set in a dieselpunk-ish world with nixie tubes visible on some of the equipment in cutscenes, and even in parts of the UI. I don't remember much awareness of nixies among folks my age until that game revitalized their image as "retro tech".

Bokagha• 8 years ago

Agreed, I also think that the Steins;Gate anime (2011) may of helped out the in resurgence (being a literal plot device).

joezydeco• 8 years ago

Let's not forget the Nixies that were scattered all around the world of Pixar's Monsters, Inc. (2001)

http://disney-hiddensecrets.tumblr.com/image/1352338597

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GhFS3H2ejNA/maxresdefault.jpg

dustinmoorenet• 8 years ago

The video in the article is just amazing. You don't normally get to see the exact details of how things get made. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxL4ElboiuA

jazzychad• 8 years ago

I've been a Nixie fan for a long time and finally started working with them ~2 years ago. Here is a custom timeline of tweets from my various projects - https://twitter.com/jazzychad/timelines/773442085278085121

yborg• 8 years ago

What kind of power draw would a full Nixie implementation of a hours and minutes clock? And what is the typical lifetime of a tube?

jacquesm3• 8 years ago

Power draw will be a bit higher than what you're used to for LED displays but not excessive, < 10 mA, they start to light up around 90V iirc, lifespan in the 100's of thousands of hours for the newest ones.

rogerbinns2• 8 years ago

I highly recommend Techmoan - http://www.techmoan.com/ - which has an enthusiastic presenter doing Youtube videos covering various retro and new items. There are several about Nixie tubes including solared powered watches! http://www.techmoan.com/display/Search?moduleId=19697008&sea...

Yhippa• 8 years ago

Thanks for that link! I watched the whole video on APS cameras: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTV99DzuJp0. What a trip down memory lane. The presenter did a great job of capturing what I remembered about APS. I really liked that format even though it sacrificed quality for convenience. I have a bunch of old reels of APS film I'll have to go see if I can get transferred to digital now.

rogerbinns2• 8 years ago

My gateway video was the one on the Tefifon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBNTAmLRmUg - a consumer music playback format. Production ended the same decade we stood on the moon.

ta3344455ff• 8 years ago

Until recently when I wanted to display some values from my factories in Factorio, I would've had no idea what these things are, thought they might be monster transporters or something.

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/justarandomgeek/nixie-tubes.

mmagin• 8 years ago

I think something which hugely benefited the appearance of Nixie tubes in hobbyist use was the incredible supply of surplus electronic components (frequently industrial / military grade parts) from the former Soviet Union that have become available through eBay over the past two decades.

Furthermore, whether due to reasons of preparation nuclear war (EMP) or due to relatively poorer expertise at manufacturing semiconductors as compared to the west, there's a huge amount of rather recent (1970s-1980s) tube-era parts. (The avionics of the MiG-25 are mostly tube-based, as I understand it.)

watmough• 8 years ago

Man, just another reason to be grateful to the Burroughs Corporation.

Here's one of the main ones:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems

kolpa• 8 years ago

Has anything displaced Nixie tubes as a Pareto improvement? Nixie tubes offer an implementation of custom single-size "vector" fonts. 7-segment displays offer badly limited fonts. Raster displays are only partly competitive with vector displays in the recent "Retina" era.

Terretta• 8 years ago

Dalibor Farny’s clocks are stunning.

Mine, circa 2016 if I recall, was well worth the wait, impeccably packaged and shipped from Czech Republic in a plywood box.

https://www.daliborfarny.com

I chose the dark model: https://www.daliborfarny.com/zen-nixie-clock/

HeyLaughingBoy2• 8 years ago

I came here to mention him. The guy's a true artist.

The Nixie Tube Story: The Neon Display Tech That Engineers Can’t Quit

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