SOME ADDITIONAL CONTEXT: I goofed here by not making clear that these wouldn't be naked in an actual product. They'd be placed behind a transparent panel, usually tinted which would reduce the impact of some of their worst flaws (however, I've seen some contemporary products which used these tubes and they're... better but still not great). Really, my issue isn't with the concept - it lived on much longer than the Numitron! My issue is with RCA's version of it: though pioneering, it wasn't very polished. (original pinned comment): Did you notice in some of the B-roll shots that they actually look more readable when they're slightly out-of-focus? That's the real downside of using segments thinner than a hair!
A part of me wonders if that's the thought behind the not-totally-black background - at least as they appear on screen in the dark-setting clips the reflected halo around the segments sort of visually highlights the segments, turning a wire-thin segment in to a blurry and diffuse but at least a little thicker one? It doesn't do a great job of it but that kind of fits the running theme of the video...
Have you ever done a video on those store price tag signs Kohl’s, or Aldis have? Calls it’s like paper white with jet black numbers making you change them like instantly. I think there is an internal like flips over or something do you know what I mean?
I wouldn't be surprised if Temu were commissioning a knock-off product to sell now. It will be marked NOS, obviously. Wait, not "marked", but "named". They won't be claiming it's "new old stock", it'll just be "numerical old-style strip-light". (Cos the people behind it will be too young to understand that a strip-light is totally different from on incandescent one, and a filament isn't a "strip".)
@@manitoba-op4jx Not them. It's the people who cater to them who will buy all the stock and build $500 clocks on crowdsourcing sites. Of course, since most products never even ship, they can just skip the tube buying all together. My guess is there are a lot of these tubes around anyway. Just about 2 years ago, some guy died with a warehouse full of millions of tubes. This was one guy and one warehouse. New tubes were manufactured from the early 20th century well into the late 70s. When I was a boy in the 70s, I remember dept stores like K-Mart had tube testers in the electronics section. You could bring in your tubes, test them on the tester and then buy new ones. Radio Shack carried them into the 80s and they were probably available in catalogs into the 90s.
Don't worry there are not many sellers and they're already too expensive. I found four in a bucket (still on a PCB) a while back in a friends shed. I now have a numitron clock. The tubes cost me nothing. I've not told him what they sell for these days.
Numitrons were designed to be used with a filter in front of them. this solves the issues you talked about. they were very popular in avionics displays because they can handle extreme temperatures and vibration, unlike the other technologies (including early LED displays, which were unreliable). typically they're driven at a constant current (rather than a constant voltage) and, while turned off, fed a small current which keeps the filament warm without illuminating it. this makes the filaments last a very long time. The displays you remember from '80s gas pumps were Panaplex displays -- basically a flat 7-segment neon-filled display designed for multiplexing. they also show up in a lot of pinball machines from the era. they required high voltage, just like Nixie tubes. although they can't handle a ton of vibration, they work well in extreme temperatures (think North Dakota in the winter) unlike LCDs which simply freeze and stop working. modern gas pumps have heaters to keep their LCD displays warm.
Numitron probably wasn't intended to be anything other than a placeholder in the display market, intended to "hold the fort" for RCA until LEDs matured enough to replace them. At the time, RCA was a leading electronics company, locked in head-to-head competition with a relatively small number of companies that were exploring the rapidly-evolving digital semiconductor market. In 1971, LEDs were very expensive (as you noted) and quite dim (which you didn't). RCA wanted to "stake a claim" to the coming 7-segment display market without waiting for higher-output LEDs to become available. RCA was still one of the leading vacuum tube manufacturers in the world at that time. The Numitron was a way for them to leverage their existing captive vacuum tube production capacity to get into the large-format 7-segment market early at fairly low cost. It was a case of "good enough" holding the fort until "much better" became available.
I made the same, albeit much simpler, comment above. They likely only put enough time and money into these so they were functional until LEDs were no longer cost prohibitive. There is a 0% chance RCA didn't know LEDs were the future and weren't aware that cost effective solutions were very close to reality. They just needed something as a holdover until it happened.
@@smalltime0A metric unit that fell out of favor, because most real world quantities, required a fractional expression Even for rather large quantities: "The number of individual parts in a typical automobile is 0.002 Krakatoa."
Electronic components were so expensive back then that it didn't really look cheap to our esthetic. Saving a bit on the driving electronics for a simple device could have made a really big difference. There may have been a technical or manufacturing reason for the low contrast supporting back screen. It may have been as simple as the manufacturing or implementation people didn't care to find a new material compatible with the gas in a light bulb.
My wife and I were electronic engineers, and as a learning project we constructed a TTL 24 hour clock with this display design. We thought it was sharp, and a friend fell asleep on our bed one night watching the clock display, he claimed he was watching it!
Numitron backing is grey because RCA used what they had in spades, the sheet steel with aluminium coat that was used to make anodes and internal structures for thermionic tubes, and this was proven to survive the glass sealing and gettering operations. Thus they used the standard tools they had in the tube plant, the flat anode sheet, slightly formed to be a stiff backing, and punched out the holes needed to hold the filaments. Then used the technology they had to make glass beads with wire in them, and sealed those into the holes, making the filament supports, and then simply used a flat section of that steel wire that was bent over to hold a length of thoriated filament wire, also a common item in the tube shop. Length and diameter calculated for the brightness needed at the applied voltage, and then simply placed in location, the ends folded over, then spot welded together to trap the tungsten wire under slight tension. Then at the rear spot welds to a lead frame attached to a standard off the shelf 9 pin glass base, and you have the complete unit. Glass top attached, and then evacuated with the standard roughing pump, and as a bonus because of the low voltage, and no need to maintain an ultra low vacuum, the roughing pump and the heat sealing of the tube is all that is needed to operate, no need for a getter to be installed, and no need to flash it, just a RF heating during sealing to get a high vacuum, then seal. Incidentally there were small versions made, the same size as your common 7 segment LED displays, and they were very popular, as they ran off 5V, and interfaced with logic. They worked best using CD4049/50 CMOS level shifting buffers, as those would source or sink 50mA no problem. Using a buffer/inverter per lamp, and a BCD decoder or counter per digit allowed those displays to be bright, and as bonus you could also use the blanking input on the drivers to use PWM to dim them. Project to replace those displays with LED ones worked, just that it really did not drop display current use, it was still 5A of current at 5V, though it was good in that at least you had a display that now was available, using a tiny HP 7 segment red display. Do one conversion and you had 16 numitron displays to use to fix others, so we only converted 3 boards to the LED version. Biggest problem was the resistor value selected was too low, so the LED displays were running way too bright, so had to be dimmed. Rather than destroying the cordwood board made to fit them, I simply used 2 6A silicon diodes in the common line, to drop the voltage seen by the LED displays down from 5V to 3V8, which made them dim to exactly match the old displays. Those 2 diodes were hard to fit in the limited space left on the display board. Users liked the new crisp displays, the bright version got complaints that it was so bright it was unreadable at night with dark adapted sight, and it lit up the entire cockpit. Display dimming had to match the other display, and that board used unijunction transistors, and had a disconcerting habit of the power transistor unsoldering itself from the wire leads, it ran so hot. Base lead unsolders itself, transistor is still conducting, runs hotter and lamp blows. Select spare lamp and it also blows, unless enough time for transistor to cool below 200C junction temperature. Would have been nice to have had some of the more modern mosfets that can handle 50A, but not at the age of that design.
You took the comment I was going to make. Lots of bad decisions usually come down to budgets. I would assume that the budget they were given was too small and the project itself was not that important to upper mgmt. So they probably went with grey because the already had a lot of them and it was standard for them.
For what they are, they are a shockingly practical design when all factors and use cases are considered. Low power consumption, reliability, low retooling and machining training costs, and simple input requirements. Seems like a win to me, especially if they made it into important use cases like aviation electronics. That usage alone tells me that they did something very right with these. I'd probably apply the "it ain't stupid if it works" adage here.
Damn, now we know why these numerical displays fail so often on MD82s & 90s... used to replace a few of these on each airplane that comes in for a daily check. I still have a pocketful of these displays with just one or two lines burnt out. My cat loves to chase these more than erasers.😂
Displays like this predated microprocessors by several years - they were typically driven by discrete logic or even mechanical switches. By the time microprocessors were a significant thing, LED displays were available.
They were ubiquitous on fuel pumps in the late 70s and throughout the 80s, as successors to the electromechanically driven rings. In avionics, Bendix King used them extensively, so they're still in widespread use in the cockpits of GA aircraft, a case of "if it works, don't fix it". Despite being filaments, and in a harsh environment (vibration), they're very reliable as they're not driven hard like incandescent lightbulbs are.
@@nezbrun872 I was just trying to think of where I've seen these, and that's it: GA avionics. I want to say the older version of those little Davtron multi-function gauges used them, and I've seen them in radios and whatnot as well.
@@nezbrun872 And once an aircraft part gets certified for commercial use, it's really difficult to get it replaced with something else because of all the red tape.
The first microprocessor I'm aware of was the TMS 1000 by Texas Instruments. That was in 1971. So yes, those displays do predate microprocessors. So do LEDs and LED displays since those started being a thing in the early 60s (I think 62 or 63ish?) Nonetheless, the need for displays for microprocessors and thus the search for a cheap and reliable way to make them nonetheless did cause them to become a valid option for display "technology". I might be misunderstanding the point of your comment though. If I do, I'm sorry.
He transformed into one of those room sized machines in the 70s. Wasn't very useful but the deceptions always found a need to have digital aid in working out sums in the episodes. My favourite version of him was the version that was adapted for western gen 1 when he transformed into a c64 and was used when the cassette bots were bringing back data not just audio ❤❤❤
Having a crappy animated recording of what the autobots were up to, shown with the accurately dull colours of the c64 was awesome. Even tho I was a ZXSpectrum kid.
I'm almost certain that the gray color for the backing was selected deliberately so that it *would* reflect a certain amount of light coming from the filaments, "blurring" the extremely narrow segment lines thus allowing the numbers to be more legible. You can even see the effect working in the medium shots of this video. Put a tinted filter plate in front of the display (like the kind used by other 7-segment displays) and it would block outside light from reflecting off the backing, further controlling the overall effect.
I know the guy who did the first 7 segment LEDs for RCA. He designed them and worked out the production of them. He worked there in the 70/80s. He has an extreme case of OCD. He is retired, and I have been to his apartment, and he has 10's of thousands of little electronic parts all organized on shelves in little bags with numbers on them, and he has the all inventoried in a database, so he can find them, and he still builds all kind of electronic projects. He lives in Springfield, Ohio. I met him on the Ham radio repeater.
Remind me of my late friend, Jim, who worked at IBM for a long time. His place was full of electronic bits, semi organized. Was constantly building little stuffs and teaching me new things. I learned a lot from that dude before he passed, he was a good influence on my teenagers.
Ive seen the whole video and I really don't think they're that bad. I mean if they only switched the gray background for a black one, it would be pretty alright, decent even.
this is the sassiest, most impassioned video essay regarding the subject of mediocre electric numerical displays I have ever seen. I could listen to you talk all day every day!
Numitron to me looks pretty dope. Elegant thin numbers, the amber glow, the smooth transitions between on and off state of each line. Everything - almost perfect design.
There's something beautiful about how old technology worked. The combination of the limitations of the available electronics and engineering of the time resulted in some unbelievably wild ideas making it into every day products.
You're right too. I remember seeing the miracle of disappearing and reappearing segments on a Seiko LCD watch in the jewellers shop in the early seventies. I saved up for and paid in instalments to the savings account in the jewellers for weeks for it, it replaced my old Trafalgar LED watch that had LED numbers that were only shown on pressing a button, painful - as it weas very stiff to push it far enough. Been a Seiko watch fanatic ever since, and now own a lot of Solar ones... I still use my late seventies Panasonic radio/flip-clock with wood effect housing....lol
Thinking along those lines… in olden days lack of refrigeration created many of the foods we enjoy today; cheese, pickled vegetables, smoked meat, sausage, etc, were created in an attempt to prolong the useful life of foods before other technologies existed. We came to appreciate certain qualities so they persist today.
I wonder if it's just us that look back at these old electronics and have a soft heart for it or if back in the day they transmitted the same kind of beauty we see right now.
@@asnovasdodiaIt's the "antique" phenomena. As someone who lived through that period, I can tell you that, like a lot of new technology, they were first considered quite ugly. If TH-cam had existed back then, the comment section would have been filled with haters. I appreciated the technology so wasn't that adverse to it. I never use the term "ugly", I used "clunky".
@@Spocothis might not be significant enough but the power armor fusion core and ammo indicators have nixie tubes as numerical representations in fallout 4 (when wearing the power armor) Oh and also the nuke codes that can drop from some ghouls in FO76 seem to have them.
I just loved the massive displays in Airports in the 70s and 80s which had flip over flaps for letters and numbers, and took bloody ages to roll over an entire line when it changed and made a racket doing it. The electronics that drove them must have been amazing. Dot matrix designs replaced them, now small screens all over the place does their job.
Split flap displays! They're beautiful and actually not too difficult to make yourself if you want. They make for fun clocks or wall art. My shop made one that can display text messages
Those commercial LCDs are also usually producing way higher brightness than the average computer screen and generate far more heat and use far more electricity. They're nicely readable, low maintenance, and quiet though!
50 years ago I owned an HP scientific calculator with a display much like this. I loved it. I found that the "Reverse Polish Notation" it used (not 4 X 5, but 4, 5, X) just made sense to me. I still think I have it around here somewhere, though the battery is probably unusable, and the charging cable probably disappeared 40 years ago. Thanks for reminding me of a little bit of technology that I still remember fondly decades later.
Same with RPN 'just works' in my brain too. I think with a popping stack ^_^ My dad had an HP-27 which is what I learned on, got my own HP-32S for high school, and then later acquired for cheap! an HP-28C at an auction. It lives quietly, silently, unpowered on my desk; a memento to history. I might dig up some batteries for it and give it some love.
About 20 years ago I sold a few NOS Numitrons via eBay to a guy in Germany who made clocks with them. I was a bit shocked that he paid to have them shipped international even though I couldn't guarantee they worked.
@@melissasmess2773 about a decade ago now I bought some OEM wheels for a car from a guy in France and had the set of 4 shipped to the US. When you love something you'll do wild stuff 😂 shipping the wheels cost basically what I paid for the wheels haha
We have a very large community of "Bastler" (best translation is probably "tinkerer") here in germany. Which is not surprising given that, before digital electronics became a thing, tinkering with analog, low-voltage electronics was a rather common hobby for many. Especially since we have on the one side a big history of people building Model-Trains, boats, planes, etc., while on the other side, many companies who produced those early analog electronics had their factories in Germany. Tinkering isn't that common now anymore, mostly because the electronics got so complex. But "the old folk" stuck with their hobby. Many common projects those people do, are usually something like: restoring analog radios, music players and amps, repairing tube tv's, and so on. Many of those guys are also middle-aged or even pensionists, who just like to tinker on older stuff they remember their parents having. And many of them also build their own stuff in their cellar-turned-workshop. They are usually aware of the risk of being scammed when ordering things like tubes, but they don't get produced anymore. And since it's "just" a hobby, those people are okay with taking a risk. If it works out great, if not...well. Time to try a new project. ~Edit: it's also a cultural thing, I think. In the after-war period, people refused almost religiously to throw away stuff. The tv/radio/car was broken? Well, time to learn how to fix it! Repair professionals are expensive, and buying new stuff is even more. And since almost any person knew a colleague who in turn knew someone else that had the necessary repair skills. So yeah, people just...fixed a lot of stuff themselves. Which for some turned from a necessity to a hobby along the way. They never went to engineer school or worked as electricians, they tought themselves how to repair and went from there.~
@@Just_Lars I've bought and sold old tech on eBay where the condition was unknown. For example I've purchased quite a lot of old telephone items where the seller did not have the ability to test the items offered and listed those items 'as-is'. That's not a 'scam'. If a seller lies or misrepresents an item's condition then it fits the definition of a 'scam'.
I think an underrated aspect of TC’s writing is the use of “we” instead of “they” when talking about technological advances in the past. Makes one feel more connected to humanity’s technological past.
You know, it's nice to have watched you for a couple of years and notice that you keep improving at presentation skills all the time. Today you have such a good sense of timing, intensity and nuance. Not underplaying, not overplaying, delivering the dry humour and being offended by silly technology smoothly. And the B-roll shots (is that what the production bits are called?) are just fantastic and support the pacing really nicely. Hats off to your content improving continuously. And you manage to find the most obscure tech yet many times it's right under our very noses, or was. This one is particularly close to heart for loving guitar amps with 200-500 V tubes and circuit inside. Thanks for the videos!
you're clearly correct about all your technical objections but also "jank" is my absolute favorite thing in any appliance or machine ever and i love them. what wonderful little freak bulbs
That's something that I like about them, too! But - and this is why I didn't bring it up - the effect is much more pronounced in my clock due to the power limitation. When actually given five volts, the segments light up much more quickly. It's so fast that you might not even notice the fade-in.
@@TechnologyConnectionsBut the fakt that you can dimm them ist quite a bonus. And i Love the Overall Look. A few of the negative Points i see as an Advantage. Due to warm Light the Low contrast and the backlighting cause of the Gray Background. They make me want to lock at them. In the Same was i want to lock at an Lavalamp instead of a naked 60w lightbulb
Or steampunk.. a numitron display using relays or encoder wheels would be a straightforward project with 1890's tech. A rotary dial would work as a controller ...
@@frontiervirtcharter them being janky is a bonus since they might look more "handmade" of course somebody likely *could* figure out how to handmake them.....
I would argue that "bringing the simplest possible solution to the marked when it makes sense" is actually a good arguemnt. Because then it makes sense. Espcecially when you know that a better alternative is already around the corner, but not quite ready yet.
Back in the early 80s, the aircraft I worked on in the Navy were full of Numitron displays. They are surprisingly rugged and long lasting given the vibrations and forces they have to contend with in avionics applications.
Plus I would expect them to easily meet the -55 to +125 degrees C temperature range demanded by the military. The same reason they were used in Gas pumps.
I worked for a company that made a frequency counter using these displays. By the time I worked there (1979) it was three models superseded, first by Nixies then by LEDs. But plenty of the old ones lived on in the R&D labs, and invariably featured a blown segment or two.
I can tell a little about Soviet numitrons (IV-9, IV-10, IV-13, IV-14, IV-16, IV-19 and IV-20). First of all, I am not sure that they were clones of RCA products, because I met them in industrial equipment produced in the mid-1960s. Secondly, the IV-9 and IV-16 were actually quite light, and the barrel-shaped moulding of the leads was done only to prevent the glass cylinders from cracking when heated. Thirdly, with 400 Hz pulse power supply (in aircraft applications), some of the tubes started to "sing" due to resonance - as a rule, this meant that the tube would fail within the next 100 hours. By 1977 such indicators were considered obsolete and were not used in new developments.
@Dukefazon -- Indeed! Our stove, our microwave, our stereo components, a couple of our alarm clocks... The things were all over lots of electronic devices when I was a kid!
Filaments don't have to be straight, thin lines. They can be coiled to make them thicker, and they can be guided around posts to make any shape you want. There are lots of examples, even in "ordinary" light bulbs.
Your memory is correct about the flat packs being in gas station pumps. I remember as a kid seeing them as well, always thinking they were pretty cool. They usually had a smoked cover over them though so you couldn't really see the pack, just the light emitted.
I remember those as well. I remember one specific gas station near home that had this type. I always just assumed they were neon and didn't go any further, but in retrospect, year, they were incandescent.
These weren't Numitrons afaik. I believe that they were Panaplex, which was the 7 segment version of the Nixie he alluded to. They were also popular in pinball machine score counters and were briefly used in (and invented for) calculators.
20:05 Thanks for the shout-out to Dr. George Heilmeier. He was a University of Pennsylvania and Philadelpha legend whom I actually had the honor to meet and serve with on a board at Penn. Rest in Peace, George.
These videos are a one-of-kind combination of genuinely fascinating but still sleep-inducing. I can go to bed, listen to this, enjoy learning the content and then fall asleep.
Note that this is in no way a critique! It's more like the atmosphere is so comfy that I get relaxed. They're like quality sleeptime stories for the tech-oriented.
I absolutely adore the colour of VFDs, the 'cooler' colour temperature to me just makes them look futuristic in a way when you make the comparison to the warmer temperatures of other displays that feel retro.
I've had a similar IV-11 clock to the one in the video for a couple years and love it. It's so different from what you see every day and now that it's so uncommon, the cool blue green color of them is really nice.
VFDs and electroluminescent lamps have a color and tone that you just cannot replicate easily on a screen, it just looks incredible and in person only.
VFDs were also advertised as being able to produce any color using filters. Of course, since all of these used the same pale blue-green phosphor, you'd b hard pressed to get a decent red from them.
You are put of your mind! Those devices are GORGEOUS. I love the thin segments. I love the slight overshoot of the vertical segments. Wow, I want one. I want a lot I also want to build your huge LED clock, on a rollable fabric
To each their own! But - I think it's important to remember the differing contexts here. Shown as I have them here, naked and highlighting their tubeyness, they do have a sort of steampunk charm. But, having seen a few examples of these in an actual product... that charm is lost and they just look bad. Here's an eBay listing for a darkroom timer which used them www.ebay.com/itm/125910714403
Numitrons were used in gas pumps at many service stations. They were larger and brighter than early LEDs, and didn't require high voltage like Nixies, or a secondary supply, like Vacuum florescent displays. Later technology made them obsolete. I still have a few new ones in my shop.
@@jamesgizasson I saw some new, surplus display boards for pumps a couple years ago at a Flea Market near Ocala, Florida. They were a good choice for this, since the displays were both low voltage and very current limited so they couldn't arc and ignite gasoline fumes. I have seen a continuous arc a +5VDC on new circuit boards. The board house had scratched the film, so we received an entire run of damaged blank boards. The arc was near the input to an ICL7106 a LCD voltmeter. This caused random readings on the displays, Luckily, it was easy to use an Exacto knife to trim the nearly invisible copper whisker.
Aside from nitpicking about the manufacturing quality, these actually don't look half bad in the video. They're completely readable and clear in the lit-up wide shots, and the fuzzy outline around the segments (from the much hated gray background) in the dark gives them a nice soft look
And I as well. I think the negative aspects were exaggerated in an attempt to sell the TH-cam video. His loyal watchers, which definitely includes myself, don't need such exaggeration as we'll gladly watch a series of videos about dishwashers, no sales needed. 😁
Our modern nostalgia for older, more analog electronics lends them a charm that they certainly didn't have when they were new. For a vintage style clock, they look great. On a critical instrument where being able to read the numbers correctly in any conditions is important, they would be awful.
I just want to mention, that I always have the captions turned on for Technology Connections videos and I appreciate all the extra effort put into them. The slapdashedly smooth jazz also never gets boring.
"Slapdashedly Smooth Jazz", the go-to music for every: - Corporate telephone on-hold informational message - Local elevator in a tall building - Technology Connections video - Pron flick
In 1974, my high school roommate from Hong Kong brought a clock he'd made himself with an LED display. Everyone was very impressed, though the tiny LED displays didn't look much better than your Numitrons. But when someone got the bright idea of turning it upside down and reading the words that formed, that was a lot of fun!
I still remember "710 0553" from my school days. There was this convoluted formula you punched into a calc, then turned it upside down for the answer. There were probably others, however the Esso one sticks in my head
Just dropping in to say I love that t-shirt and it brings back memories of playing "near, far" with the tv screen while delighting in the 'optical illusion' of all those dots blending together into a watchable image the farther away I got from the screen.
I loved the glow of the “Nixie Tubes” on our old frequency generators and counters years ago in our darkened radar van. The hum and glow was mesmerizing and I found them beautiful.
@scottzehrung4829 That's petty cool! Didn't think the US ever used Nixies in equipment. Like I said, a lot of Soviet era equipment uses them, to the point they've kind of become synonymous with Soviet electronics.
@@Whiskey11Gaming The “Built in Test Equipment “ couldn’t handle the 3.5 Gigawatt pulse, two big old heavy generators and counters going into the dummy load and the old equipment made a cozy burn-in period. Last of the big stand-alone radar generators. That radar could ionize fluorescent lights on second floors for blocks every ten seconds.
@@scottzehrung4829 I'm not sure much would take that load outside the main array and maybe the ground. I'll be honest, I'm more versed in Eastern Block stuff just because I find the whole IADS concept fascinating. Even put together the entire Cold War IADS together on a Google Earth KMZ file to marvel at how many missiles were pointed at the sky in Europe to prevent WWIII.
This tech was widely used in aviation for clocks and other displays. It was smaller, and I cannot remember if it was called Numitron or not. (Edit: Minitron is their name.) They are usually put behind a filter screen, that makes them easier to see. Simular to how VFDs were used. That eliminates one of your biggest gripes. You don't see the background, and contrast is much better. I have several of these old aviation clocks and a few new tubes sitting around. They are small squared off devices that slot in similarly to an IC chip rather than the large tube. The old clock was a Davtron M811B and they have newer versions, the M850 and M877. I have several of the 811B and 877s. The tubes in the 811 are larger, and have that look of being electronics manufactured mid 20th century. The 877 has tubes that look more modern in construction, and it looks like the M850 uses the same tech from what I can tell. Funny thing is, it apears you can still buy the M850 new, and they cost about the same as a single replacement tube assembly for repair. $400-500, depending on the source. You need to buy traceable parts for aviation, and that makes them expensive. Plus the low volume of manufacture and sale. They don't tend to burn out often, I have only replaced a few.
I have a X-Y digital readout for my milling machine that I got for free in the 90's because the flat pack incandescent seven segment displays were failing. Friends and I upgraded it to LED's and it still works to this day. Thanks for this wonderful history lesson! I never knew they made them in vacuum tube shapes.
Alec, I am just a middle age hard working hillbilly from the mountains of East Tennessee, but I want you to know that I appreciate you. We are very different people, but probably have tons in common. Thank you.
You are absolutely right! I had my first car in 1971 and loved the nixie tubes that were on all the petrol pumps. I was horrified when they started replacing them all with numotrons which often had segments missing and just looked cheap compared to the lovely green VFD in my 1970 CBM calculator (which still works)!
Really? He's being a "big fat meanie", "negative Nancy", (or whatever kawaii terms he loves to use) here about those bulbs. It just seems a very nasty spirited video.
It sounds as if they put exactly the right amount of effort/money/time into this product, for the limited amount of time it would be relevant. If they had done it better, would it have lasted longer on the market? Probably not.
I'm not sure I'd agree - the existence of the later clones in flat packages (with actually-black backgrounds) proves that RCA had a valuable-enough _concept_ but they failed to execute well. Honestly I think a lot of it comes from hubris and the desire to keep their tube-manufacturing machinery going a little while longer.
@@TechnologyConnections Your seething hate in this video just seemed WAY out of proportion to any legitimate criticisms you had for the bulbs. Like, I'm literally sitting hear wondering if you might be having some emotional issues right now because it just seems so out or proportion to what I'm used to seeing in your videos.
@@Call_Me_David I don't hate them! It's just that there's a _lot_ to make fun of, here, and I decided to have that fun. That fun isn't at the expense of the idea, though. It's RCA's execution of it. There's a listing for an item on eBay right now which used these tubes ( www.ebay.com/itm/125910714403 if you're curious) and even behind a color filter and driven at the correct voltage, they look very crude. Something that I wish I had stressed more in this script is that the context around these has shifted dramatically. Of course 50 years later, when Nixie tube clocks are so popular hand-made tubes are selling well, this looks interesting! And built into a clock with protruding tubes, they have a novelty and charm which is, even to me, intriguing. But looking through the lens of display technologies actually intended to go into products... they're just not very good.
@@daemiaxshe has done a video on her "plus sign" numitron, and she mentioned the trick about driving them constantly with low current to extend their life.
One of my favorite things about your videos are the fact you have no sponsorships, well other than Too Many Small Kitchen Appliances. Love that company.
This was fairly common in many of the soviet-made tubes. I've always been slightly perplexed by it since I can't imagine it was a significant cost-savings at all, but because the numerals partially obscures those behind them, it may have been judged more readable for tubes of that size.
Later Nixies had a proper '5' digit. I have a nixie clock made with German Telefunken ZM1210 tubes and they look really nice; much better than the earlier ones with an upside down 2.
1.5 minutes in and I'm commenting - what made the Numitrons nice was their reliability, very low voltages needed, and 100K hour life at low cost. VFD tubes lasted about 1/4 as long as Numitorns even if they were more efficient.
Non-black bg is a FEATURE not a bug. 12:29 The grey-ish background was an INTENTIONAL design choice (not a mistake) to get the effect he implies is a flaw - it's SUPPOSED TO illuminate the bg a bit to create the glow effect in order to make the digits brighter and/or 'larger' to make them more visible because the filaments are so thin. i think it looks cool, personally.
You are misrepresenting how they were used. They are a point light source designed to be diffused. Put them behind a frosted plastic (protective) panel and they are very easy to read.
It'd have to be a very not very frosted panel. The light source is well behind the panel surface and radiant across a large angle. That would make for a funky light box where people can't tell what's making the light.
Dangerous?! Edison told me DC was the safe one and it's Westinghouse's AC I should worry about. So I will stick with the Nixie tubes thank you very much.
DC isn't just less efficient, it's actually more dangerous than AC at the same voltage. At mains voltage, you'll never be able to turn it off if you use the wrong switch, because it will simply arc across the contacts and weld them permanently together. AC requires much higher voltages before this happens because it always crosses 0V twice every cycle, which helps to extinguish arcs even if they do form. A switch rated for 240VAC may only be able to handle 24VDC or so before it becomes impossible to turn off
I will grant it this. When filmed, these look like an animated version of the time stamp impressed on disposable film cameras, which is a deeply nostalgic and happy aesthetic to me, so I feel nothing but good will for then when filmed from afar
I love the Numitron clock. The warm, gentle light, the slow transition of the numbers, the beautiful glass envelope. So easy on the tired eye. It’s the best bedroom clock ever imho.
I've built several Numitron clocks, including a couple using a very obscure RCA Numitron, the DTF-104B (.85" digit, flat end-view tube). One of those has been running continuously in my bedroom for around 15 years with no failures. I really love the "friendly orange glow", which gets friendlier as they're dimmed (the clock has six levels of PWM dimming). Another (with RUssian IV-9 tubes) went to my ex-wife, and she loves it too. I agree: best bedroom clock ever!
My dad's old 7 segment display alarm clock has a system I've not been able to find any info about. When it finally broke he let me take it apart and it had two sheets of glass for each number with black stripes. Thr sheets were connected to a wheel with grooves in it. As the wheel turned, it caused the plates to slide and the stripes would line up to form the numbers of a display. We were quite surprised it wasn't just some sort of back lit LCD.
These displays give me a warm fuzzy nostalgic feeling. When I was a kid, the ticket machines for our public transportation system used Numitrons to indicate how much money you need to put into the machine. Good old days...
There were other incandescent 7-segment displays that looked like flat DIP devices with a glass plate on top and DIP pins on the bottom. (An ebay search today shows a few.) I remember it was a stocked part at Radio Shack in the 1970s.
We never used Numitron tubes, but there was a period... roughly 20 years or so, where we were using (red) LED 7-segment displays and matrix displays. The matrix displays were really cool, basically they were just a rectangle (similar to a 7-segment digit), but each "digit" was a matrix of point-source LEDs. For example, 8 x 7. The matrix displays could be used to produce very legible alpha-numeric representations, including lower and upper case. And if you stacked a couple next to each other you could produce a scrolling display. Actually, you could produce a scrolling display even with just a single digit and output perfectly legible sentences that humans could easily read and understand. While you could produce an alphabet with just 7-segments (and even more with 15-segment displays which were briefly a thing too)... while you could do that, you could not produce and distinguish every individual letter in a way that a human could naturally read. The digital drivers for these displays were really easy to make. You literally just have a direct digital output for a single column and then you have a demultiplexer chip to select which column to drive. The power required was small enough that HCMOS logic could directly drive the columns. In anycase, for 7-segment, you needed 8 digital outputs (including the decimal point "."), plus one open-collector output for each whole digit. A very small number of digital I/Os could drive many digits. Each digit was driven individually, time-domain multiplexed. For example, you drive digit #1 for 1 millisecond, then you drive digit #2 for 1 millisecond, and so forth, repeatedly, to drive the whole display. One very interesting consequence of doing this with a CPU (like a 6502 or a 68000 in those days), and having a 1ms timer interrupt, was that your main loop could not disable interrupts at all because the timer interrupt had to be very precise or the human eye would pick-up the distortions in the time-domain multiplexing of the digits. One segment would be displayed slightly longer and appear brighter (even just 20 microseconds of jitter was enough), other segments slightly shorter. There were 7-segment driver chips that took care of the timing, but it was cheaper and better to drive the displays directly from a CPU-controlled digital I/O because you could do a whole lot more with the display with direct CPU control. -Matt
@@jdeg2000 I don't remember the brand but mostly they were 7-segment displays that looked like wide dip chips that we soldered straight-down into the circuit board. With glazed segments and either white or black insets, and potted from the back. They were very pretty displays! And then later on we began using red matrix LEDs. Same physical dimensions as the 7-segments but they had a matrix of point-source LEDs and a lot more pins. Those were lots of fun. The matrix LED displays were not as pretty but you could form a fully readable alphabet on them and even push sentences out even with just one device with a little scrolling algo. I wrote my first from-scratch "font" in my 20s to drive those things and there was much awe. Never had a single failure. -Matt
I love how janky they are, As a product designer myself, I bet the people working on these had a blast designing them, the sheer "slap stick" energy they radiate is just amazing, the pins also being the only support for the internal board (no wonder it's all crooked), the tape that hides the back wiring wrapping around the front of the board, the barely stuck in needles holding the filaments, and the cheap gold paint on the even cheaper metal rings around the base of the bulbs. My only real critic would be the background, it doesn't look like it's made of anything special, they could have easily just picked something darker. It's a shame they were hidden behind tinted panels, at least make the panel transparent to show off how cool they look !
SeanBZA mentioned they used things commonly available in the factory, so the background was deliberately chosen because they had it available in spades. I wonder what their timeline was, since they had to know other tech was coming down the pipe. It seems like the kind of project where they needed something "now" and as cheaply as possible.
My dad had one of those original calculators with the miniature incandescent 7-segment digital displays. I recall the segments when lighted, exhibited an almost imperceptible vibration that strained the eyes; he soon upgraded to the first HP programmable calculator with reverse Polish notation entry, and a 7-segment LED display, which was encased in a smoky transparent plastic bar, each digit magnified by a little convex “bubble” lens. By looking at the side of the of the display at a very shallow angle, the digits could be directly viewed, and they were tiny, perhaps 1-2mm high!
12:37 In the wide shots, the Numitron numerals look fine. In the closeups, I can see the problems. Are the problems as clear to the human eye a few feet away?
Interesting video. I do think you were a little hard on the numatron though. I think the reason they weren’t more polished is that they appear to use the existing vacuum tube materials and manufacturing processes of the time.
@@Yidhra23 I am also from the UK, but switch to American terms to avoid confusion (I guess I messed up here!). I do miss the days when you could put two quid's worth of fuel in and get some decent mileage from it. 😂
Some of the reasoning for their use in avionics comes from the necessity of being able to dim an entire instrument panel and having everything on the same brightness curve.
12:31 Your clock has a bug where it goes "58-69-00" instead of "58-59-00" on the seconds part. Extremely weird to see a six in the second's tens place XD
@@Lampe2020 Possibly. Seems more unlikely to me to do that by accident though! I feel like I saw another comment mentioning it that Alec had liked, also. But I may be wrong.
SOME ADDITIONAL CONTEXT:
I goofed here by not making clear that these wouldn't be naked in an actual product. They'd be placed behind a transparent panel, usually tinted which would reduce the impact of some of their worst flaws (however, I've seen some contemporary products which used these tubes and they're... better but still not great). Really, my issue isn't with the concept - it lived on much longer than the Numitron! My issue is with RCA's version of it: though pioneering, it wasn't very polished.
(original pinned comment): Did you notice in some of the B-roll shots that they actually look more readable when they're slightly out-of-focus? That's the real downside of using segments thinner than a hair!
A part of me wonders if that's the thought behind the not-totally-black background - at least as they appear on screen in the dark-setting clips the reflected halo around the segments sort of visually highlights the segments, turning a wire-thin segment in to a blurry and diffuse but at least a little thicker one? It doesn't do a great job of it but that kind of fits the running theme of the video...
How expensive are they now. Guessing a limited supply exists somewhere.
Have you ever done a video on those store price tag signs Kohl’s, or Aldis have? Calls it’s like paper white with jet black numbers making you change them like instantly. I think there is an internal like flips over or something do you know what I mean?
@@langr752 Yes! Not in that context, but those are E-ink displays.
@@TechnologyConnectionsyour spaceship earth reference made my day
eBay sellers are going to be wondering why there's a run on Numitron tubes for the next 24 hours.
I wouldn't be surprised if Temu were commissioning a knock-off product to sell now. It will be marked NOS, obviously. Wait, not "marked", but "named". They won't be claiming it's "new old stock", it'll just be "numerical old-style strip-light". (Cos the people behind it will be too young to understand that a strip-light is totally different from on incandescent one, and a filament isn't a "strip".)
I still have unused nixie tubes from a project that I wanted to create.
@@manitoba-op4jx Not them. It's the people who cater to them who will buy all the stock and build $500 clocks on crowdsourcing sites. Of course, since most products never even ship, they can just skip the tube buying all together.
My guess is there are a lot of these tubes around anyway. Just about 2 years ago, some guy died with a warehouse full of millions of tubes. This was one guy and one warehouse. New tubes were manufactured from the early 20th century well into the late 70s.
When I was a boy in the 70s, I remember dept stores like K-Mart had tube testers in the electronics section. You could bring in your tubes, test them on the tester and then buy new ones. Radio Shack carried them into the 80s and they were probably available in catalogs into the 90s.
@azmax623 you and me both, I have like 20 backups for Divergence meter.
Don't worry there are not many sellers and they're already too expensive. I found four in a bucket (still on a PCB) a while back in a friends shed. I now have a numitron clock. The tubes cost me nothing. I've not told him what they sell for these days.
Numitrons were designed to be used with a filter in front of them. this solves the issues you talked about. they were very popular in avionics displays because they can handle extreme temperatures and vibration, unlike the other technologies (including early LED displays, which were unreliable). typically they're driven at a constant current (rather than a constant voltage) and, while turned off, fed a small current which keeps the filament warm without illuminating it. this makes the filaments last a very long time.
The displays you remember from '80s gas pumps were Panaplex displays -- basically a flat 7-segment neon-filled display designed for multiplexing. they also show up in a lot of pinball machines from the era. they required high voltage, just like Nixie tubes. although they can't handle a ton of vibration, they work well in extreme temperatures (think North Dakota in the winter) unlike LCDs which simply freeze and stop working. modern gas pumps have heaters to keep their LCD displays warm.
I vaguely remember Fran Blanche doing some good videos on the subject.
Thank you! Someone else knows about the lenses
Didn’t know about the constant current drive, but that’s a smart way to preserve lifetime
he literally talks about filters in the video
Ah! I thought I remembered the gas pump displays having a gas like glow to them.
great info 👍
Numitron probably wasn't intended to be anything other than a placeholder in the display market, intended to "hold the fort" for RCA until LEDs matured enough to replace them. At the time, RCA was a leading electronics company, locked in head-to-head competition with a relatively small number of companies that were exploring the rapidly-evolving digital semiconductor market. In 1971, LEDs were very expensive (as you noted) and quite dim (which you didn't). RCA wanted to "stake a claim" to the coming 7-segment display market without waiting for higher-output LEDs to become available.
RCA was still one of the leading vacuum tube manufacturers in the world at that time. The Numitron was a way for them to leverage their existing captive vacuum tube production capacity to get into the large-format 7-segment market early at fairly low cost.
It was a case of "good enough" holding the fort until "much better" became available.
Your comment was more informative than this entire video.
I made the same, albeit much simpler, comment above. They likely only put enough time and money into these so they were functional until LEDs were no longer cost prohibitive.
There is a 0% chance RCA didn't know LEDs were the future and weren't aware that cost effective solutions were very close to reality. They just needed something as a holdover until it happened.
“Ignore all the continuity errors. It’s a running clock”
Yeah not to mention the Krakatoa’s worth of lava lamps behind you
😆A Krakatoa of lava lamps...! Priceless!
Lol
@@kimvibk9242 Its the metric unit.
@@smalltime0A metric unit that fell out of favor, because most real world quantities, required a fractional expression Even for rather large quantities: "The number of individual parts in a typical automobile is 0.002 Krakatoa."
@@smalltime0 Surely the metric unit is an Etna of lava lamps? 😉
I like how you spent the entire video trying to convince us how bad the Numitron was, but only managed to make us fall in love with it
sickos ;)
@@TechnologyConnections YOU CAN'T CONTROL ME!! MUAHAHAHA
I feel like the audience here overlaps a good bit with people that like steampunk aesthetics so it was inevitable
@@TechnologyConnections oh please, you must've known this was going to happen
Electronic components were so expensive back then that it didn't really look cheap to our esthetic. Saving a bit on the driving electronics for a simple device could have made a really big difference. There may have been a technical or manufacturing reason for the low contrast supporting back screen. It may have been as simple as the manufacturing or implementation people didn't care to find a new material compatible with the gas in a light bulb.
My wife and I were electronic engineers, and as a learning project we constructed a TTL 24 hour clock with this display design. We thought it was sharp, and a friend fell asleep on our bed one night watching the clock display, he claimed he was watching it!
my sister was the engineer who engineered it.
Once an engineer, always an engineer.
My grandma she engineered it!
Ngl I dont understand this story, wym "he was watching it"? Ok so he was watching a clock?
@openlink9958 yeah it has zero payoff 😂
Numitron backing is grey because RCA used what they had in spades, the sheet steel with aluminium coat that was used to make anodes and internal structures for thermionic tubes, and this was proven to survive the glass sealing and gettering operations. Thus they used the standard tools they had in the tube plant, the flat anode sheet, slightly formed to be a stiff backing, and punched out the holes needed to hold the filaments. Then used the technology they had to make glass beads with wire in them, and sealed those into the holes, making the filament supports, and then simply used a flat section of that steel wire that was bent over to hold a length of thoriated filament wire, also a common item in the tube shop. Length and diameter calculated for the brightness needed at the applied voltage, and then simply placed in location, the ends folded over, then spot welded together to trap the tungsten wire under slight tension. Then at the rear spot welds to a lead frame attached to a standard off the shelf 9 pin glass base, and you have the complete unit. Glass top attached, and then evacuated with the standard roughing pump, and as a bonus because of the low voltage, and no need to maintain an ultra low vacuum, the roughing pump and the heat sealing of the tube is all that is needed to operate, no need for a getter to be installed, and no need to flash it, just a RF heating during sealing to get a high vacuum, then seal.
Incidentally there were small versions made, the same size as your common 7 segment LED displays, and they were very popular, as they ran off 5V, and interfaced with logic. They worked best using CD4049/50 CMOS level shifting buffers, as those would source or sink 50mA no problem. Using a buffer/inverter per lamp, and a BCD decoder or counter per digit allowed those displays to be bright, and as bonus you could also use the blanking input on the drivers to use PWM to dim them.
Project to replace those displays with LED ones worked, just that it really did not drop display current use, it was still 5A of current at 5V, though it was good in that at least you had a display that now was available, using a tiny HP 7 segment red display. Do one conversion and you had 16 numitron displays to use to fix others, so we only converted 3 boards to the LED version. Biggest problem was the resistor value selected was too low, so the LED displays were running way too bright, so had to be dimmed. Rather than destroying the cordwood board made to fit them, I simply used 2 6A silicon diodes in the common line, to drop the voltage seen by the LED displays down from 5V to 3V8, which made them dim to exactly match the old displays. Those 2 diodes were hard to fit in the limited space left on the display board. Users liked the new crisp displays, the bright version got complaints that it was so bright it was unreadable at night with dark adapted sight, and it lit up the entire cockpit. Display dimming had to match the other display, and that board used unijunction transistors, and had a disconcerting habit of the power transistor unsoldering itself from the wire leads, it ran so hot. Base lead unsolders itself, transistor is still conducting, runs hotter and lamp blows. Select spare lamp and it also blows, unless enough time for transistor to cool below 200C junction temperature. Would have been nice to have had some of the more modern mosfets that can handle 50A, but not at the age of that design.
You took the comment I was going to make. Lots of bad decisions usually come down to budgets. I would assume that the budget they were given was too small and the project itself was not that important to upper mgmt. So they probably went with grey because the already had a lot of them and it was standard for them.
For what they are, they are a shockingly practical design when all factors and use cases are considered.
Low power consumption, reliability, low retooling and machining training costs, and simple input requirements.
Seems like a win to me, especially if they made it into important use cases like aviation electronics. That usage alone tells me that they did something very right with these.
I'd probably apply the "it ain't stupid if it works" adage here.
Cudos to all you folks who report all this old institutional knowledge that would have otherwise be lost to the ether.
Great post.
Damn, now we know why these numerical displays fail so often on MD82s & 90s... used to replace a few of these on each airplane that comes in for a daily check. I still have a pocketful of these displays with just one or two lines burnt out. My cat loves to chase these more than erasers.😂
Displays like this predated microprocessors by several years - they were typically driven by discrete logic or even mechanical switches. By the time microprocessors were a significant thing, LED displays were available.
They were ubiquitous on fuel pumps in the late 70s and throughout the 80s, as successors to the electromechanically driven rings.
In avionics, Bendix King used them extensively, so they're still in widespread use in the cockpits of GA aircraft, a case of "if it works, don't fix it". Despite being filaments, and in a harsh environment (vibration), they're very reliable as they're not driven hard like incandescent lightbulbs are.
@@nezbrun872 I was just trying to think of where I've seen these, and that's it: GA avionics. I want to say the older version of those little Davtron multi-function gauges used them, and I've seen them in radios and whatnot as well.
@@nezbrun872 And once an aircraft part gets certified for commercial use, it's really difficult to get it replaced with something else because of all the red tape.
The first microprocessor came out right about the same time, the Intel 4004.
The first microprocessor I'm aware of was the TMS 1000 by Texas Instruments. That was in 1971. So yes, those displays do predate microprocessors. So do LEDs and LED displays since those started being a thing in the early 60s (I think 62 or 63ish?)
Nonetheless, the need for displays for microprocessors and thus the search for a cheap and reliable way to make them nonetheless did cause them to become a valid option for display "technology".
I might be misunderstanding the point of your comment though. If I do, I'm sorry.
Numitrons, Nixies, etc., are wonderfully steampunk. You could be totally gangstah with a clock like that.
Neither are steampunk-era technology, but I know what you mean.
I'm fond of Nixie tubes myself.
"Numitron, take out Bumble Bee while I fight Prime" ~ Megatron 1972
Numitron definitely transforms into a TI-89
@@skylermorris3379if it's 1972 then maybe an HP-35?
Numitron was my favourite robot. I liked him even more than the one that was a cassette player. I still have one of the cassette bots on my shelf 😂
He transformed into one of those room sized machines in the 70s. Wasn't very useful but the deceptions always found a need to have digital aid in working out sums in the episodes. My favourite version of him was the version that was adapted for western gen 1 when he transformed into a c64 and was used when the cassette bots were bringing back data not just audio ❤❤❤
Having a crappy animated recording of what the autobots were up to, shown with the accurately dull colours of the c64 was awesome. Even tho I was a ZXSpectrum kid.
I'm almost certain that the gray color for the backing was selected deliberately so that it *would* reflect a certain amount of light coming from the filaments, "blurring" the extremely narrow segment lines thus allowing the numbers to be more legible. You can even see the effect working in the medium shots of this video. Put a tinted filter plate in front of the display (like the kind used by other 7-segment displays) and it would block outside light from reflecting off the backing, further controlling the overall effect.
That would make sense that they would be even thinner if they had a very Black background. You can sacrifice a bit of Contrast for a bit of thickness
I know the guy who did the first 7 segment LEDs for RCA. He designed them and worked out the production of them. He worked there in the 70/80s. He has an extreme case of OCD. He is retired, and I have been to his apartment, and he has 10's of thousands of little electronic parts all organized on shelves in little bags with numbers on them, and he has the all inventoried in a database, so he can find them, and he still builds all kind of electronic projects. He lives in Springfield, Ohio. I met him on the Ham radio repeater.
sounds like a great guy. I'd like to know more about his database, as I'm interested in that kind of optimal organization.
care to share?
@@inkinky weren’t you just told that was pathology
@@inkinky he just tells a good story
That definitely sounds like a ham radio encounter 😊
Remind me of my late friend, Jim, who worked at IBM for a long time. His place was full of electronic bits, semi organized. Was constantly building little stuffs and teaching me new things. I learned a lot from that dude before he passed, he was a good influence on my teenagers.
"Now, I'm about to be rather unkind to this piece of alleged technology," he said after basically calling it a piece of shit
He even names it "alleged" technology, like it's saying it's a technology, but hasn't proven it
Could not stop laughing when he said that, you mean to tell me that you've been comparatively kind to it so far??
Now, now. He called them seven POSes, backed by an eighth POS, and housed in a ninth POS
Ive seen the whole video and I really don't think they're that bad. I mean if they only switched the gray background for a black one, it would be pretty alright, decent even.
@@aceman0000099 "It would be pretty alright, decent even" is entering my lexicon for sure
this is the sassiest, most impassioned video essay regarding the subject of mediocre electric numerical displays I have ever seen. I could listen to you talk all day every day!
Numitron to me looks pretty dope. Elegant thin numbers, the amber glow, the smooth transitions between on and off state of each line. Everything - almost perfect design.
absolutely, they look amazing imo
yes, i need a clock with these.
Agreed, i guess when you see the mole from austin powers every time you pass the mirror, you need to direct your rage at something...
I was going to say, he was talking about how ugly they are and the whole time I was thinking how gorgeous they are!
Tbh there ARE nixie tubes
There's something beautiful about how old technology worked. The combination of the limitations of the available electronics and engineering of the time resulted in some unbelievably wild ideas making it into every day products.
You're right too. I remember seeing the miracle of disappearing and reappearing segments on a Seiko LCD watch in the jewellers shop in the early seventies. I saved up for and paid in instalments to the savings account in the jewellers for weeks for it, it replaced my old Trafalgar LED watch that had LED numbers that were only shown on pressing a button, painful - as it weas very stiff to push it far enough. Been a Seiko watch fanatic ever since, and now own a lot of Solar ones... I still use my late seventies Panasonic radio/flip-clock with wood effect housing....lol
They are also just pretty. I'd love to see some nixie-a-likes with led filament
Thinking along those lines… in olden days lack of refrigeration created many of the foods we enjoy today; cheese, pickled vegetables, smoked meat, sausage, etc, were created in an attempt to prolong the useful life of foods before other technologies existed. We came to appreciate certain qualities so they persist today.
I wonder if it's just us that look back at these old electronics and have a soft heart for it or if back in the day they transmitted the same kind of beauty we see right now.
@@asnovasdodiaIt's the "antique" phenomena. As someone who lived through that period, I can tell you that, like a lot of new technology, they were first considered quite ugly. If TH-cam had existed back then, the comment section would have been filled with haters. I appreciated the technology so wasn't that adverse to it. I never use the term "ugly", I used "clunky".
The more he poops on those poor little Numitrons, the more I love them 🥹
"Janky"...if I needed a "digital" clock in my aspirational Fallout-themed basement, I'd be happy with those.
Fallout uses Nixie tubes.
@@ferretyluv Where in the original Fallout games do Nixie tubes appear?
@@Spocothis might not be significant enough but the power armor fusion core and ammo indicators have nixie tubes as numerical representations in fallout 4 (when wearing the power armor)
Oh and also the nuke codes that can drop from some ghouls in FO76 seem to have them.
I just loved the massive displays in Airports in the 70s and 80s which had flip over flaps for letters and numbers, and took bloody ages to roll over an entire line when it changed and made a racket doing it. The electronics that drove them must have been amazing. Dot matrix designs replaced them, now small screens all over the place does their job.
Still in use in some train stations. They have very good readability and zero power draw when unchanging.
Split flap displays! They're beautiful and actually not too difficult to make yourself if you want. They make for fun clocks or wall art. My shop made one that can display text messages
As a child I LOVED waiting for the huge boards to change, and listening to all the letters flap into place!
in a way it has been replaced by the smallest screen we have... I get a notification on my watch when my plane is ready to board.
Those commercial LCDs are also usually producing way higher brightness than the average computer screen and generate far more heat and use far more electricity. They're nicely readable, low maintenance, and quiet though!
50 years ago I owned an HP scientific calculator with a display much like this. I loved it. I found that the "Reverse Polish Notation" it used (not 4 X 5, but 4, 5, X) just made sense to me. I still think I have it around here somewhere, though the battery is probably unusable, and the charging cable probably disappeared 40 years ago. Thanks for reminding me of a little bit of technology that I still remember fondly decades later.
Same with RPN 'just works' in my brain too. I think with a popping stack ^_^
My dad had an HP-27 which is what I learned on, got my own HP-32S for high school, and then later acquired for cheap! an HP-28C at an auction. It lives quietly, silently, unpowered on my desk; a memento to history. I might dig up some batteries for it and give it some love.
About 20 years ago I sold a few NOS Numitrons via eBay to a guy in Germany who made clocks with them. I was a bit shocked that he paid to have them shipped international even though I couldn't guarantee they worked.
I sold a vinTage milkshake mixer to a guy in Germany in 2000, it was really expensive to ship and he rewired the motor to run on 240 VAC.
Not surprised. A lot of old (mid-century) American tech is very popular in Europe and Japan.
@@melissasmess2773 about a decade ago now I bought some OEM wheels for a car from a guy in France and had the set of 4 shipped to the US.
When you love something you'll do wild stuff 😂 shipping the wheels cost basically what I paid for the wheels haha
We have a very large community of "Bastler" (best translation is probably "tinkerer") here in germany. Which is not surprising given that, before digital electronics became a thing, tinkering with analog, low-voltage electronics was a rather common hobby for many. Especially since we have on the one side a big history of people building Model-Trains, boats, planes, etc., while on the other side, many companies who produced those early analog electronics had their factories in Germany. Tinkering isn't that common now anymore, mostly because the electronics got so complex. But "the old folk" stuck with their hobby.
Many common projects those people do, are usually something like: restoring analog radios, music players and amps, repairing tube tv's, and so on. Many of those guys are also middle-aged or even pensionists, who just like to tinker on older stuff they remember their parents having. And many of them also build their own stuff in their cellar-turned-workshop. They are usually aware of the risk of being scammed when ordering things like tubes, but they don't get produced anymore. And since it's "just" a hobby, those people are okay with taking a risk. If it works out great, if not...well. Time to try a new project.
~Edit: it's also a cultural thing, I think. In the after-war period, people refused almost religiously to throw away stuff. The tv/radio/car was broken? Well, time to learn how to fix it! Repair professionals are expensive, and buying new stuff is even more. And since almost any person knew a colleague who in turn knew someone else that had the necessary repair skills. So yeah, people just...fixed a lot of stuff themselves. Which for some turned from a necessity to a hobby along the way. They never went to engineer school or worked as electricians, they tought themselves how to repair and went from there.~
@@Just_Lars I've bought and sold old tech on eBay where the condition was unknown. For example I've purchased quite a lot of old telephone items where the seller did not have the ability to test the items offered and listed those items 'as-is'. That's not a 'scam'. If a seller lies or misrepresents an item's condition then it fits the definition of a 'scam'.
I think an underrated aspect of TC’s writing is the use of “we” instead of “they” when talking about technological advances in the past. Makes one feel more connected to humanity’s technological past.
A technology connection, so to say....
Yeah I'll see myself out...
@rierku *Ba dum tss*
Hmmm
You know, it's nice to have watched you for a couple of years and notice that you keep improving at presentation skills all the time. Today you have such a good sense of timing, intensity and nuance. Not underplaying, not overplaying, delivering the dry humour and being offended by silly technology smoothly. And the B-roll shots (is that what the production bits are called?) are just fantastic and support the pacing really nicely. Hats off to your content improving continuously. And you manage to find the most obscure tech yet many times it's right under our very noses, or was. This one is particularly close to heart for loving guitar amps with 200-500 V tubes and circuit inside. Thanks for the videos!
you're clearly correct about all your technical objections but also "jank" is my absolute favorite thing in any appliance or machine ever and i love them. what wonderful little freak bulbs
I think they look quite good, I'm a fan of how they fade in and out as well when changing numbers.
That's something that I like about them, too! But - and this is why I didn't bring it up - the effect is much more pronounced in my clock due to the power limitation. When actually given five volts, the segments light up much more quickly. It's so fast that you might not even notice the fade-in.
I think they have a neat almost steam punk-ish aesthetic -- would be cool to use in an escape room puzzle or something.
@@empathogen75 They would look fantastic reflected on a car windscreen as a heads up display!
@@C.I...For use only at night…
@@TechnologyConnectionsBut the fakt that you can dimm them ist quite a bonus. And i Love the Overall Look. A few of the negative Points i see as an Advantage. Due to warm Light the Low contrast and the backlighting cause of the Gray Background. They make me want to lock at them. In the Same was i want to lock at an Lavalamp instead of a naked 60w lightbulb
4:12 Perfect "How it's Made"-esc shot!!!!!!
12:31. I have to rewind to make sure I was seeing that right. Love the detailed touch there
🤣
Oh man, discovering I missed this makes me want to re-watch all of his videos again just to catch all the little Easter eggs
Came here looking for this comment!
LOL I have seen it but didn't realize xD
Boggles my mind how far I had to scroll to find this comment...
It might not scream quality, but it screams cool retro in a Brazil film style
Or steampunk.. a numitron display using relays or encoder wheels would be a straightforward project with 1890's tech. A rotary dial would work as a controller ...
@@frontiervirtcharter Pretty cool idea, with all the components on show
@@frontiervirtcharter them being janky is a bonus since they might look more "handmade"
of course somebody likely *could* figure out how to handmake them.....
@@chickadeestevenson5440I agree. I think that the mass production clone-ness of things in our society is boring and lacks variety
@@liam3284 That's part of the fun
When the seconds ticking from the B-roll to the A-roll sync at 20:58. So satisfying.
Happens multiple times. Just proves how crazy this guy is.
I would argue that "bringing the simplest possible solution to the marked when it makes sense" is actually a good arguemnt. Because then it makes sense. Espcecially when you know that a better alternative is already around the corner, but not quite ready yet.
Back in the early 80s, the aircraft I worked on in the Navy were full of Numitron displays. They are surprisingly rugged and long lasting given the vibrations and forces they have to contend with in avionics applications.
Plus I would expect them to easily meet the -55 to +125 degrees C temperature range demanded by the military. The same reason they were used in Gas pumps.
Here's the big reason. Rca had major defense contracts and had a captive customer.
I worked for a company that made a frequency counter using these displays. By the time I worked there (1979) it was three models superseded, first by Nixies then by LEDs. But plenty of the old ones lived on in the R&D labs, and invariably featured a blown segment or two.
I can tell a little about Soviet numitrons (IV-9, IV-10, IV-13, IV-14, IV-16, IV-19 and IV-20). First of all, I am not sure that they were clones of RCA products, because I met them in industrial equipment produced in the mid-1960s. Secondly, the IV-9 and IV-16 were actually quite light, and the barrel-shaped moulding of the leads was done only to prevent the glass cylinders from cracking when heated. Thirdly, with 400 Hz pulse power supply (in aircraft applications), some of the tubes started to "sing" due to resonance - as a rule, this meant that the tube would fail within the next 100 hours. By 1977 such indicators were considered obsolete and were not used in new developments.
I love the VFD, it's such a cool design and 80's and 90's devices looked cool because of them.
I have an alarm clock with a VFD display. They look nice.
VFDs were all the rage in auto instrument clusters back in the day. I had a Ford Probe with a digital cluster. I felt like Don Johnson in Miami Vice.
@@MrSloikaI remember my moms 88’ Pontiac having those. The Grand Prix also had an insanely complicated compass that was never calibrated.
@@MrSloika ford was using them for a while, even in relatively new cars until they went with LCD's.
I liked the deep green VFD in my Taurus.
@Dukefazon -- Indeed! Our stove, our microwave, our stereo components, a couple of our alarm clocks... The things were all over lots of electronic devices when I was a kid!
Filaments don't have to be straight, thin lines. They can be coiled to make them thicker, and they can be guided around posts to make any shape you want. There are lots of examples, even in "ordinary" light bulbs.
Thinner and coiled filaments would sag, guides complicate the design. More practical would be to place milky glass right in front of them.
Your memory is correct about the flat packs being in gas station pumps. I remember as a kid seeing them as well, always thinking they were pretty cool. They usually had a smoked cover over them though so you couldn't really see the pack, just the light emitted.
I remember those as well. I remember one specific gas station near home that had this type. I always just assumed they were neon and didn't go any further, but in retrospect, year, they were incandescent.
These weren't Numitrons afaik. I believe that they were Panaplex, which was the 7 segment version of the Nixie he alluded to. They were also popular in pinball machine score counters and were briefly used in (and invented for) calculators.
@@BokBarber If they are amber, they could be Panaplex, but the incandescent displays in a flat package are Minitrons.
20:05 Thanks for the shout-out to Dr. George Heilmeier. He was a University of Pennsylvania and Philadelpha legend whom I actually had the honor to meet and serve with on a board at Penn. Rest in Peace, George.
These videos are a one-of-kind combination of genuinely fascinating but still sleep-inducing. I can go to bed, listen to this, enjoy learning the content and then fall asleep.
Note that this is in no way a critique! It's more like the atmosphere is so comfy that I get relaxed. They're like quality sleeptime stories for the tech-oriented.
I absolutely adore the colour of VFDs, the 'cooler' colour temperature to me just makes them look futuristic in a way when you make the comparison to the warmer temperatures of other displays that feel retro.
I've had a similar IV-11 clock to the one in the video for a couple years and love it. It's so different from what you see every day and now that it's so uncommon, the cool blue green color of them is really nice.
VFDs and electroluminescent lamps have a color and tone that you just cannot replicate easily on a screen, it just looks incredible and in person only.
Vfds also came in pixel displays up to 256x128, and i have a few 128x64 i got out of some old medical equipment
VFDs were also advertised as being able to produce any color using filters. Of course, since all of these used the same pale blue-green phosphor, you'd b hard pressed to get a decent red from them.
@@BrightBlueJimi have seen VCR displays with orange and red even without a filter (unless its right inside of the glass)
You are put of your mind! Those devices are GORGEOUS. I love the thin segments. I love the slight overshoot of the vertical segments. Wow, I want one. I want a lot
I also want to build your huge LED clock, on a rollable fabric
To each their own!
But - I think it's important to remember the differing contexts here. Shown as I have them here, naked and highlighting their tubeyness, they do have a sort of steampunk charm. But, having seen a few examples of these in an actual product... that charm is lost and they just look bad. Here's an eBay listing for a darkroom timer which used them
www.ebay.com/itm/125910714403
@@TechnologyConnections wow that display really does look cheap/broken doesn't it
almost looks like it has survived a nuclear fallout or something
@@TechnologyConnections that display looks sick. Yes it's janky, but its also incredibly cool.
@@arronalt Doesn't look cheap at all. Solid metal construction with decent switches. Looks more industrial to me.
@@kunka592 talking about the displays not the metal frame or switches
they're not even aligned (cause that's how they were made)
The Numitron follows the Sten gun principles- schlock you have works better than good stuff you don't have.
The way the segments fade on and off is beautiful, peaceful, soothing, like a flame. Speaking of flame, perhaps you can make a clock of fire.
As a retired Analog Design Engineer in the 70's, I enjoyed the history of numeric displays. I still have plenty of them in my junk boxes.
Numitrons were used in gas pumps at many service stations. They were larger and brighter than early
LEDs, and didn't require high voltage like Nixies, or a secondary supply, like Vacuum florescent displays. Later technology made them obsolete. I still have a few new ones in my shop.
I might have seen these as a kid in the 90s. I grew up in a small town that took its time catching up to the modern era. :)
@@jamesgizasson I saw some new, surplus display boards for pumps a couple years ago at a Flea Market near Ocala, Florida. They were a good choice for this, since the displays were both low voltage and very current limited so they couldn't arc and ignite gasoline fumes. I have seen a continuous arc a +5VDC on new circuit boards. The board house had scratched the film, so we received an entire run of damaged blank boards.
The arc was near the input to an ICL7106 a LCD voltmeter. This caused random readings on the displays, Luckily, it was easy to use an Exacto knife to trim the nearly invisible copper whisker.
Aside from nitpicking about the manufacturing quality, these actually don't look half bad in the video. They're completely readable and clear in the lit-up wide shots, and the fuzzy outline around the segments (from the much hated gray background) in the dark gives them a nice soft look
I think they look great. Maybe it looks worse in person, but they seemed very aesthetically pleasing to me.
Numitron looks great too me, even with its flaws.
And I as well. I think the negative aspects were exaggerated in an attempt to sell the TH-cam video. His loyal watchers, which definitely includes myself, don't need such exaggeration as we'll gladly watch a series of videos about dishwashers, no sales needed. 😁
I like nixi tubes more
I like the font!
Our modern nostalgia for older, more analog electronics lends them a charm that they certainly didn't have when they were new. For a vintage style clock, they look great. On a critical instrument where being able to read the numbers correctly in any conditions is important, they would be awful.
@@dfgaJK l love them. I found a few in an ewaste bin a while back and have been wanting to make a clock with them
I just want to mention, that I always have the captions turned on for Technology Connections videos and I appreciate all the extra effort put into them.
The slapdashedly smooth jazz also never gets boring.
"Slapdashedly Smooth Jazz", the go-to music for every:
- Corporate telephone on-hold informational message
- Local elevator in a tall building
- Technology Connections video
- Pron flick
In 1974, my high school roommate from Hong Kong brought a clock he'd made himself with an LED display. Everyone was very impressed, though the tiny LED displays didn't look much better than your Numitrons. But when someone got the bright idea of turning it upside down and reading the words that formed, that was a lot of fun!
I still remember "710 0553" from my school days.
There was this convoluted formula you punched into a calc, then turned it upside down for the answer.
There were probably others, however the Esso one sticks in my head
@@paulstubbs7678 0.1134 is another I remember (it doesn't quite work in this font; on a 7-segment display the upside-down four would appear as an "h")
1:03 I love mechanical segment displays so much, there's just something kind of soothing about watching them change.
Just dropping in to say I love that t-shirt and it brings back memories of playing "near, far" with the tv screen while delighting in the 'optical illusion' of all those dots blending together into a watchable image the farther away I got from the screen.
"Oh Hey, LEDs" I seriously lost it at that point. Thanks I needed a good laugh.
I loved the glow of the “Nixie Tubes” on our old frequency generators and counters years ago in our darkened radar van. The hum and glow was mesmerizing and I found them beautiful.
Which radar van would that be? The Soviets used Nixies a lot.
@@Whiskey11Gaming AN/TPS-43E, we’d cart the old equipment in for the Klystron /TWT tests whenever we changed the Twystron .
@scottzehrung4829 That's petty cool! Didn't think the US ever used Nixies in equipment. Like I said, a lot of Soviet era equipment uses them, to the point they've kind of become synonymous with Soviet electronics.
@@Whiskey11Gaming The “Built in Test Equipment “ couldn’t handle the 3.5 Gigawatt pulse, two big old heavy generators and counters going into the dummy load and the old equipment made a cozy burn-in period. Last of the big stand-alone radar generators. That radar could ionize fluorescent lights on second floors for blocks every ten seconds.
@@scottzehrung4829 I'm not sure much would take that load outside the main array and maybe the ground. I'll be honest, I'm more versed in Eastern Block stuff just because I find the whole IADS concept fascinating. Even put together the entire Cold War IADS together on a Google Earth KMZ file to marvel at how many missiles were pointed at the sky in Europe to prevent WWIII.
Hey man, I found you years ago, thank you so much you are fantastic I appreciate your work.
This tech was widely used in aviation for clocks and other displays. It was smaller, and I cannot remember if it was called Numitron or not.
(Edit: Minitron is their name.)
They are usually put behind a filter screen, that makes them easier to see. Simular to how VFDs were used. That eliminates one of your biggest gripes. You don't see the background, and contrast is much better.
I have several of these old aviation clocks and a few new tubes sitting around. They are small squared off devices that slot in similarly to an IC chip rather than the large tube.
The old clock was a Davtron M811B and they have newer versions, the M850 and M877. I have several of the 811B and 877s. The tubes in the 811 are larger, and have that look of being electronics manufactured mid 20th century. The 877 has tubes that look more modern in construction, and it looks like the M850 uses the same tech from what I can tell.
Funny thing is, it apears you can still buy the M850 new, and they cost about the same as a single replacement tube assembly for repair. $400-500, depending on the source. You need to buy traceable parts for aviation, and that makes them expensive. Plus the low volume of manufacture and sale.
They don't tend to burn out often, I have only replaced a few.
I have a X-Y digital readout for my milling machine that I got for free in the 90's because the flat pack incandescent seven segment displays were failing. Friends and I upgraded it to LED's and it still works to this day.
Thanks for this wonderful history lesson! I never knew they made them in vacuum tube shapes.
The Numitron is truly Wabi-Sabi
The Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi is all about accepting the imperfect and finding beauty in the flawed.
Alec, I am just a middle age hard working hillbilly from the mountains of East Tennessee, but I want you to know that I appreciate you. We are very different people, but probably have tons in common. Thank you.
man, I miss Fayetteville... family, and good folks all around
@@codyfrance2537 I remember gas pumps having the number wheels like the car tachymeters
12:31 Nice.
From the beginning of the video I was sure that some reference will be made. Not disappointed.
The timing is perfect
Nice
Let's get that out onto a tray.. oops sorry wrong channel
I do not get it, please explain.
You are absolutely right! I had my first car in 1971 and loved the nixie tubes that were on all the petrol pumps. I was horrified when they started replacing them all with numotrons which often had segments missing and just looked cheap compared to the lovely green VFD in my 1970 CBM calculator (which still works)!
I just wanted to say that there are few channels I get this excited for new content. Thank you for being you.
I heartily agree. The uniqueness of his youishness knows no bounds.
Really? He's being a "big fat meanie", "negative Nancy", (or whatever kawaii terms he loves to use) here about those bulbs.
It just seems a very nasty spirited video.
@@tbird-z1r Yep, he was really mean to those bulbs.
There's this old Texas saying: It ain't braggin' if it's real.
It sounds as if they put exactly the right amount of effort/money/time into this product, for the limited amount of time it would be relevant. If they had done it better, would it have lasted longer on the market? Probably not.
I'm not sure I'd agree - the existence of the later clones in flat packages (with actually-black backgrounds) proves that RCA had a valuable-enough _concept_ but they failed to execute well. Honestly I think a lot of it comes from hubris and the desire to keep their tube-manufacturing machinery going a little while longer.
@@TechnologyConnections Wouldn't a black background just hurt visibility due to the brightness and width of the wires?
@@TechnologyConnections Your seething hate in this video just seemed WAY out of proportion to any legitimate criticisms you had for the bulbs. Like, I'm literally sitting hear wondering if you might be having some emotional issues right now because it just seems so out or proportion to what I'm used to seeing in your videos.
@@Call_Me_David I don't hate them! It's just that there's a _lot_ to make fun of, here, and I decided to have that fun. That fun isn't at the expense of the idea, though. It's RCA's execution of it.
There's a listing for an item on eBay right now which used these tubes ( www.ebay.com/itm/125910714403 if you're curious) and even behind a color filter and driven at the correct voltage, they look very crude.
Something that I wish I had stressed more in this script is that the context around these has shifted dramatically. Of course 50 years later, when Nixie tube clocks are so popular hand-made tubes are selling well, this looks interesting! And built into a clock with protruding tubes, they have a novelty and charm which is, even to me, intriguing. But looking through the lens of display technologies actually intended to go into products... they're just not very good.
@@TechnologyConnections Do you think it would improve their appearance if they somehow made the filaments thicker? Would that even be possible?
You missed an opportunity with: "It didn't take long at all for LEDs to get cheap. And once they did, the Numitron was Doomitronned."
Thank you for promoting Fran. She is a gem and is a very underrated channel!
Literally went to Fran's channel when I saw this, to see if she also made a video about it.
I found Fran years ago looking for some stuff on C64 and found one of her old video's . I have been watching ever since.
@@daemiaxshe has done a video on her "plus sign" numitron, and she mentioned the trick about driving them constantly with low current to extend their life.
Thank goodness this was the only time RCA brought a product to market just in time for it to become totally obsolete.
One of my favorite things about your videos are the fact you have no sponsorships, well other than Too Many Small Kitchen Appliances. Love that company.
I"m so so annoyed that the 5 in Nixie tubes is just an inverted 2
I think I noticed that when I was a kid and staring at a display, hey, it's an upside down 2!
This was fairly common in many of the soviet-made tubes. I've always been slightly perplexed by it since I can't imagine it was a significant cost-savings at all, but because the numerals partially obscures those behind them, it may have been judged more readable for tubes of that size.
Later Nixies had a proper '5' digit. I have a nixie clock made with German Telefunken ZM1210 tubes and they look really nice; much better than the earlier ones with an upside down 2.
Yes as with calculators - 58008 upside down etc.
Aud here I aw tryiug to figure out how to do au upsidedowu u
1.5 minutes in and I'm commenting - what made the Numitrons nice was their reliability, very low voltages needed, and 100K hour life at low cost. VFD tubes lasted about 1/4 as long as Numitorns even if they were more efficient.
Non-black bg is a FEATURE not a bug. 12:29 The grey-ish background was an INTENTIONAL design choice (not a mistake) to get the effect he implies is a flaw - it's SUPPOSED TO illuminate the bg a bit to create the glow effect in order to make the digits brighter and/or 'larger' to make them more visible because the filaments are so thin. i think it looks cool, personally.
Massive kudos on Aligning the times between the different footages!
Posy made a great video about segmented displays if additional viewing is desired :)
There's a video about segmented displays, a video about vacuum flourescent displays, and probably a couple of videos about LCDs.
Wanted to mention the same xD
@@Screwtapello And in the first video about LCDs this early weird variety of LCD with light scattering is shown
You are misrepresenting how they were used. They are a point light source designed to be diffused. Put them behind a frosted plastic (protective) panel and they are very easy to read.
It'd have to be a very not very frosted panel. The light source is well behind the panel surface and radiant across a large angle. That would make for a funky light box where people can't tell what's making the light.
I recall seeing numitrons in British petrol pumps in the late 70's. As a geeky kid at the time, I was always facinated by them.
I saw them in US gas pumps in the 1970's as well.
I've never felt so sad for a glowing tube until you really hammered down on just how bad they are
I just want to point out, that your video shots are amazing the work with camera make it look like how's it made episode intro and I love it
I adore the Nixie style displays, and these are close! A great video as always, my friend.
Dangerous?! Edison told me DC was the safe one and it's Westinghouse's AC I should worry about.
So I will stick with the Nixie tubes thank you very much.
Ask Topsy about AC.
DC isn't just less efficient, it's actually more dangerous than AC at the same voltage. At mains voltage, you'll never be able to turn it off if you use the wrong switch, because it will simply arc across the contacts and weld them permanently together. AC requires much higher voltages before this happens because it always crosses 0V twice every cycle, which helps to extinguish arcs even if they do form. A switch rated for 240VAC may only be able to handle 24VDC or so before it becomes impossible to turn off
I'm so happy to see you referencing Fran's videos. My 2 favourite TH-camrs!!!
I will grant it this. When filmed, these look like an animated version of the time stamp impressed on disposable film cameras, which is a deeply nostalgic and happy aesthetic to me, so I feel nothing but good will for then when filmed from afar
I love the Numitron clock. The warm, gentle light, the slow transition of the numbers, the beautiful glass envelope. So easy on the tired eye. It’s the best bedroom clock ever imho.
I've built several Numitron clocks, including a couple using a very obscure RCA Numitron, the DTF-104B (.85" digit, flat end-view tube). One of those has been running continuously in my bedroom for around 15 years with no failures. I really love the "friendly orange glow", which gets friendlier as they're dimmed (the clock has six levels of PWM dimming). Another (with RUssian IV-9 tubes) went to my ex-wife, and she loves it too. I agree: best bedroom clock ever!
My dad's old 7 segment display alarm clock has a system I've not been able to find any info about.
When it finally broke he let me take it apart and it had two sheets of glass for each number with black stripes. Thr sheets were connected to a wheel with grooves in it. As the wheel turned, it caused the plates to slide and the stripes would line up to form the numbers of a display. We were quite surprised it wasn't just some sort of back lit LCD.
Sounds like it might be the Telechron Occlusion Clock.
@@eDoc2020 That is it! Interesting, thanks!
They’d make a great prop for a steampunk themed display though.
Agreed. Nothing beats Nixie for coolness, but this is something else that could, theoretically, have been done with older technology.
Like the Steins;Gate divergence meter!
Yup. It's like something you'd see in Dr. Frankenstein's lab.
@@lawnmower16I came here specifically thinking of that!
These things are newer than a CRT television.
I really enjoyed this video! Thanks Alec!
The Spaceship Earth reference at 2:01 didn't go unnoticed! Masterful work, as usual, that made my day. 😁
I was searching for this comment for way too long!❤️
I came here to say this 😂
Thank goodness for the first backup system... Otherwise we might not have gotten here 🤣
There's something charming about these old displays
Great video. Really like how you displayed such a great understanding of such an illuminating device.
These displays give me a warm fuzzy nostalgic feeling. When I was a kid, the ticket machines for our public transportation system used Numitrons to indicate how much money you need to put into the machine. Good old days...
There were other incandescent 7-segment displays that looked like flat DIP devices with a glass plate on top and DIP pins on the bottom. (An ebay search today shows a few.) I remember it was a stocked part at Radio Shack in the 1970s.
Fuji 3015F Minitron was very popular.
Wamco. I used this in cockpit instruments. I think I still have few. They even had bar graph displays.
JUST LOVE YOUR VIDEOS !!!!! THANK YOU
We never used Numitron tubes, but there was a period... roughly 20 years or so, where we were using (red) LED 7-segment displays and matrix displays. The matrix displays were really cool, basically they were just a rectangle (similar to a 7-segment digit), but each "digit" was a matrix of point-source LEDs. For example, 8 x 7.
The matrix displays could be used to produce very legible alpha-numeric representations, including lower and upper case. And if you stacked a couple next to each other you could produce a scrolling display. Actually, you could produce a scrolling display even with just a single digit and output perfectly legible sentences that humans could easily read and understand.
While you could produce an alphabet with just 7-segments (and even more with 15-segment displays which were briefly a thing too)... while you could do that, you could not produce and distinguish every individual letter in a way that a human could naturally read.
The digital drivers for these displays were really easy to make. You literally just have a direct digital output for a single column and then you have a demultiplexer chip to select which column to drive. The power required was small enough that HCMOS logic could directly drive the columns.
In anycase, for 7-segment, you needed 8 digital outputs (including the decimal point "."), plus one open-collector output for each whole digit. A very small number of digital I/Os could drive many digits.
Each digit was driven individually, time-domain multiplexed. For example, you drive digit #1 for 1 millisecond, then you drive digit #2 for 1 millisecond, and so forth, repeatedly, to drive the whole display. One very interesting consequence of doing this with a CPU (like a 6502 or a 68000 in those days), and having a 1ms timer interrupt, was that your main loop could not disable interrupts at all because the timer interrupt had to be very precise or the human eye would pick-up the distortions in the time-domain multiplexing of the digits. One segment would be displayed slightly longer and appear brighter (even just 20 microseconds of jitter was enough), other segments slightly shorter.
There were 7-segment driver chips that took care of the timing, but it was cheaper and better to drive the displays directly from a CPU-controlled digital I/O because you could do a whole lot more with the display with direct CPU control.
-Matt
Did you ever use Stanley 7 segment displays? They're highly sought after today. I'll let you guess why 😃
@@jdeg2000 I don't remember the brand but mostly they were 7-segment displays that looked like wide dip chips that we soldered straight-down into the circuit board. With glazed segments and either white or black insets, and potted from the back. They were very pretty displays!
And then later on we began using red matrix LEDs. Same physical dimensions as the 7-segments but they had a matrix of point-source LEDs and a lot more pins. Those were lots of fun.
The matrix LED displays were not as pretty but you could form a fully readable alphabet on them and even push sentences out even with just one device with a little scrolling algo. I wrote my first from-scratch "font" in my 20s to drive those things and there was much awe.
Never had a single failure.
-Matt
I love how janky they are, As a product designer myself, I bet the people working on these had a blast designing them, the sheer "slap stick" energy they radiate is just amazing, the pins also being the only support for the internal board (no wonder it's all crooked), the tape that hides the back wiring wrapping around the front of the board, the barely stuck in needles holding the filaments, and the cheap gold paint on the even cheaper metal rings around the base of the bulbs.
My only real critic would be the background, it doesn't look like it's made of anything special, they could have easily just picked something darker.
It's a shame they were hidden behind tinted panels, at least make the panel transparent to show off how cool they look !
SeanBZA mentioned they used things commonly available in the factory, so the background was deliberately chosen because they had it available in spades.
I wonder what their timeline was, since they had to know other tech was coming down the pipe. It seems like the kind of project where they needed something "now" and as cheaply as possible.
“What if we made a weird little light bulb”
I’ve watched the video three times now and I laugh out loud each time I get to this point.
0:03 2137 mentioned
Am I getting too old to understand memes
@@maddog9213That. Or you come from a different country.
the book?
@@maddog9213nah you'r good it's just Polish people thingy
My dad had one of those original calculators with the miniature incandescent 7-segment digital displays. I recall the segments when lighted, exhibited an almost imperceptible vibration that strained the eyes; he soon upgraded to the first HP programmable calculator with reverse Polish notation entry, and a 7-segment LED display, which was encased in a smoky transparent plastic bar, each digit magnified by a little convex “bubble” lens. By looking at the side of the of the display at a very shallow angle, the digits could be directly viewed, and they were tiny, perhaps 1-2mm high!
12:37 In the wide shots, the Numitron numerals look fine. In the closeups, I can see the problems. Are the problems as clear to the human eye a few feet away?
I can confirm these were Indeed popular on gas pumps probably around the '80s iirc.
Yes! I remember being annoyed at the vertical segments going past the horizontal ones 😅
Ah, I remember seeing those in gas pumps now. I always thought it was a fluorescent style display, like a neon gas.
Now I know what I was looking at
Interesting video. I do think you were a little hard on the numatron though. I think the reason they weren’t more polished is that they appear to use the existing vacuum tube materials and manufacturing processes of the time.
@@Yidhra23 I am also from the UK, but switch to American terms to avoid confusion (I guess I messed up here!). I do miss the days when you could put two quid's worth of fuel in and get some decent mileage from it. 😂
Awesome! Finally caught a video during the daytime instead of finding the video 5 minutes before bed
Always love your presentation and content.
The always-conservative aviation industry has used these for far too long; I believe some of them are still in use today in 737 NG IRS panels
Those would probably be Fuji 3015F Minitrons
@@zaprodk Looks familiar! They also used versions that show N/S and E/W
Cessna factory radios used these or something very similar in the late 1970s through the mid-1980s
Yes they definitely are- i knew they looked familiar
Some of the reasoning for their use in avionics comes from the necessity of being able to dim an entire instrument panel and having everything on the same brightness curve.
12:31 Your clock has a bug where it goes "58-69-00" instead of "58-59-00" on the seconds part. Extremely weird to see a six in the second's tens place XD
Nice. Blaze it
Surely not a bug but a very intentional Easter egg (4:20:59 becomes 4:20:69 in the video).
@@nyunta139
Well, but that may be accidental. It seems to _always_ go 58-69-00, even from other times than 4:00:58.
@@Lampe2020 Possibly. Seems more unlikely to me to do that by accident though! I feel like I saw another comment mentioning it that Alec had liked, also. But I may be wrong.