Nixie Tube Clock: Amber Glow of Neon Gas Discharge Technology in Retro and Vintage Electronic Clocks

Introduced ca. 1955 - 1956 by Burroughs Corporation, a business machine manufacturing giant founded in 1886 in St. Louis, Missouri, the Nixie tube derives its name from NIX 1, an abbreviation of Numeric Indicator Experiment No. 1, Burroughs' laboratory designation for the cold-cathode display tube.

Nixie tubes have enjoyed such popularity that the trade name, trademarked by the Burroughs Corporation, has become the generic name, thereby superseding the proper generic name of cold cathode neon readout tube.

By the 1970s Nixies were suffering competition from:
• light-emitting diodes (LEDs), first introduced by Texas Instruments in October 1962 and
• vacuum fluorescent displays (VFDs), first introduced in 1959 by Dutch-based electronics giant, Philips.

Manufacture in volume continued in the former Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Fortunately, surplus tubes were not destroyed but instead were stored as surplus in warehouses, especially in Russia and eastern European countries.

The electronic device known as the Nixie tube uses glow discharge to display information via letters, numerals, or symbols which are stacked as individual units in a glass gas-filled tube.

• The most popular usage of Nixie tubes has been for numeric displays, especially as timepieces such as clocks or watches.

Glow discharge references the luminous glow of plasma, which joins gas, liquid, and solid in the quartet of the four fundamental states of matter.

• Plasma may be created from gas which has been either heated or subjected to a strong electromagnetic field.
• Nixie tubes comprise the category of cold cathode tubes because their glow is activated by an electrical current, not by heat.

Each tube in a Nixie Clock houses:

• a metal-meshed anode;
• ten metal cathodes, shaped as numbers 0 through 9 and stacked behind each other, with placement determined by digit contours rather than by sequence;
• mercury, a transition metal also known as quicksilver, and neon, an inert gas, in a Penning mixture, a prescribed mixture of gases for lighting or displays.

The application of 175 to 180 volts of electricity between the anode and the selected cathode ionizes, or charges, the neon gas, thereby producing an amber glow which illuminates the number.

Nixie Tube Clocks exert timeless appeal, as testified by their resurgence in popularity, serving as a nostalgic bridge between the first decade of the technology-themed twenty-first century and the last five decades of the technology-oriented twentieth century.

The tubes' signature amber light glows heartily and cultivates warm reminiscences of hearth fires.

Thanks to surplus tubes, housed in warehouses long after cessation of production in volume, Nixies are available in contemporary and retro styles. The tubes' vintage status emphasizes not only their past significance but also their future coherence.

• Fortunate, indeed, are the fans who own authentic Nixie Tube Clocks, warmly appreciated and carefully preserved since the two decade-plus heyday of mid-1950s to early 1980s.

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Nixie Tube timekeeper fan: closeup of Nixie Tube watch on left wrist of Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak)
"Woz' Nixie Tube Watch": August 28, 2010: Neal Krummell (tarzxf), CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/tarzxf/4935500259

Nixie Clock, with six ZM1210 tubes made by Telefunken
Telefunken: German radio and television apparatus company, founded in Berlin, northeastern Germany, in 1903: Haseluenne, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nixie_clock.jpg

Amber glow of time via Nixie Tube technology shows time as 13 minutes shy of 7 o'clock: precisely, 6 hours 46 minutes 37 seconds.
"Nixie Tubes": Hiroyuki Takeda (onigiri-kun), CC BY ND 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/onigiri_chang/8444279440

Dakin, C.J., and C.E.G. Cooke. Circuits for Digital Equipment. London UK: Iliffe Books Ltd., 1967.

Libes, Sol. Fundamentals and Applications of Digital Logic Circuits. Rochelle Park NJ: Hayden Book Company, 1975.

Veeneman, Dan. "Nixie Tube Displays." Decode Systems > Vintage Displays. Dan Veeneman. Web. www.decodesystems.comSobel, Alan. “Electronic Numbers.” Scientific American, Vol. 228, No. 6 (June 1, 1973): 64 - 73.

• Available at: http://www.decodesystems.com/nixie.html