The Nixie Tube Story: The Neon Display Tech That Engineers Can’t Quit | Hacker News Reader

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

spectrum.ieee.org

86 pointssohkamyung27 comments

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...

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

Can you recommend a good cost-effective kit/clock for someone to dip their toes into the field with? I've often looked at them, but when forking over a couple of hundred US dollars, a bit of insight into what's what would be ideal :P

Velleman used to sell one, I see it is gone from their line up.

https://www.velleman.eu/products/view/?id=380384

I have nothing but good stuff to say about Elektor so if you can get this shipped you'd be in business.

https://www.elektor.com/six-digit-nixie-clock-150189-71

Thanks for that! I think I might check out the Elektor kit :)

You're welcome. If you buy it and start building it and you get stuck on something let me know and I'll help you out. Remote debugging is fun :)

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/

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

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

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!

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.

And amateur fishing sonar screens...

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 ;-)

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.)

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.

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".

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

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

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

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.

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