Nixie tube

A nixie tube is an electrical component to represent different characters. The display works on the principle of a glow lamp and introduced in 1957.

The characters to be displayed, usually the digits 0 to 9, with a decimal point or comma, but also depending on the application, other characters are, one after the other punched from fine sheet or bent from wire and electrically isolated from each other as the cathode in a with an inert gas (often neon - filled for orange-red fluorescent color ) tube placed. Round before this number package is a normally executed as a fine metal mesh anode in the tube and the very back of a black background. When a voltage (depending on type about 80 to 250 volts ) between the anode and a cathode glows the gas in a thin layer to the corresponding character.

Through various noble gas mixtures can achieve different colors. The height of the points was set at 8 mm to about 120 mm. Due to the need to install all cathode spatially separate in the tube, the number of possible characters per tube is limited to about twelve.

The principle of Nixie tube has been known since the 1920s, but did not apply until the advent of digital signal processing in the 1950s. " Nixie " was registered in the United States in 1954 by the Burroughs Corporation as a trademark and is the abbreviation of " Numeric Indicator eXperimental No. 1 ", the name of a first draft of such a tube.

The British manufacturer Ericsson Telephones Limited ( ETL) used for legal reasons the brand name " Digitron ".

Nixie tubes were mainly for displaying digits in measuring instruments and computers in use in the 1960s and 1970s. Later they lost with the advent of vacuum fluorescent and especially light-emitting diode displays ( seven segment display) rapidly in importance. Today they are still used by hobbyists for example for the construction of watches. Nixie tubes are no longer produced for a long time, which is reflected on the prices.

Nixie tube, about 1970; Diameter 30 mm digit height 18 mm

Modern Nixieuhr an amateur hobbyist, here with LED backlighting.