Nixie tube
A nixie tube is an electronic device for displaying numbers or other information, in the form of a glass tube containing multiple cathodes and a wire mesh anode, filled with neon and often a little mercury and/or argon at a small fraction of atmospheric pressure. Although it resembles a vacuum tube in appearance, its operation does not depend on a cathode that is heated to cause it to emit electrons (the thermionic effect). It is therefore called a cold-cathode tube.
The most common form of nixie tube has ten cathodes in the shapes of the numerals 0 to 9 (and occasionally a decimal point or two), but there are also types that show various letters, signs and symbols. Each cathode can be made to glow by applying about 170 Volts DC between it and the anode.
Applications
Nixies were used as numeric displays in early digital frequency counters, voltmeters, and many other types of technical equipment. They also appeared in costly digital time displays used in research and military establishments, and in the first electronic desk calculator, the vacuum tube-based Sumlock-Comptometer ANITA of 1961. Later alphanumeric versions in fourteen segment display format found use in airport arrival/departure signs and stock ticker displays.
History
The Nixie display was developed by a small vacuum tube manufacturer called Haydu Brothers Laboratories, and introduced in 1954 by Burroughs Corporation, who purchased Haydu and owned the name Nixie as a trademark. Similar devices that functioned in the same way were patented in the 1920s, and the first mass-produced display tubes were introduced in the late 1930s by National Union Co. and Telefunken. However, their construction was cruder, and they failed to find many applications until digital electronics reached a suitable level of development in the 1950s.
According to an article in the June 1973 issue of Scientific American magazine (p.66), the name Nixie was derived by Burroughs from "NIX I", an abbreviation of "Numeric Indicator eXperimental No. 1".
Burroughs even had another Haydu tube that could operate as a digital counter and directly drive a Nixie tube for display. This was called a "Trochotron", in later form known as the "Beam-X" counter tube. Trochotrons were used in the UNIVAC 1101 computer, as well as in clocks and frequency counters.
Some Nixie-like displays made by other firms were called by various trademarked names including Numicator and Digitron. The proper generic name is "cold-cathode neon readout tube", though the phrase "nixie tube" quickly entered the vernacular as a generic term. Hundreds of variations of this design were manufactured by many firms, from the 1950s until the 1990s.
Other numeric display technologies concurrently in use included backlit columnar transparencies, light pipe, rear-projection and edge-lit lightguide displays (all using incandescent bulbs for illumination); Numitron incandescent filament readouts and vacuum fluorescent display tubes. Many columnar (a.k.a. "thermometer") and some light pipe displays used neon bulbs rather than incandescent.
Nixie tubes were superseded in the 1970s by light-emitting diodes (LEDs), often in the form of seven-segment displays. LEDs were better suited to the low voltages that integrated circuits used, which was a definite (and sometimes essential) advantage for portable devices such as the emerging pocket calculators and handheld digital measurement instruments.
Citing dissatisfaction with the aesthetics of modern digital displays and a nostalgic fondness for the styling of obsolete technology, a significant number of electronics enthusiasts in recent years have shown interest in reviving Nixies. Unsold tubes that have been sitting in warehouses for decades are being brought out and used, the most common application being in homemade digital clocks using modern semiconductors.
