In the 1950s, folks didn’t have snazzy LCD displays, but they did have cold cathode neon readout tubes. Let’s take a look inside one of the more popular brands of these tubes – the NIXIE – and marvel over its clever design.
These photos are from a teardown conducted by the folks of Evil Mad Scientist Labs, and they show the inner workings of a nixie tub – complete with the little stacks of numbers. You can check out more photos and learn more about the magic of these old-school displays over on the Evil Mad Scientist site. [Evil Mad Scientist via Core77]
Mick
Monday, September 27, 2010 at 9:16 AMI wonder why the two eights… was it a commonly used number and prone to burnout?
Dragonscale1988
Monday, September 27, 2010 at 10:03 AMhad a read through it and was very interesting,
@mick from the article
“The set of numbers is beautiful. Notice that there are two identical 8′s, and that the “one” is made of two lines. This helped to keep it as bright as the other numbers in spite of being so much small”
AnthonyP
Monday, September 27, 2010 at 12:28 PMSorry, But I think LED 8 segment displays where used before LCD, then comes the cathode displays!