Retro Clock Geekery
Posted on September 15, 2005 in Fun Things, Personal
(last edited on April 29, 2014 at 1:28 am)
(last edited on April 29, 2014 at 1:28 am)
Buddy Duncan forwarded me this link to nixieclock.net, where they are selling the insanely-cool CHRONOTRONIX IN-18 NIXIE CLOCK. Nixie tubes are an old vacuum tube technology that predates the CRT and LED. There are 10 wires, each in the shape of the digits 0 through 9, stacked on top of each other inside the tube. When electricity is applied, the selected digit glows in shimmering neon light. Yum!
You can read more about the history and construction of nixie tubes on the nixieclock home page. And if you’ve got $499 burning a hole in your pocket, you can even buy one! This would be a nice complement to your new iPod Nano!
5 Comments
Are you kidding? This puts the Nano to shame! Much much more awesome, in a very retro way.
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Yeah, I know what you mean. I wish I had both to look at side to side…coolness from two different sides of the spectrum!
Not to plug too badly, but I wanted to address your comment. I also make nixie clocks for fun. My clock opens up with a glass door so you can see “both sides of the spectrum,” i.e. both the tubes and the hand-assembled SMT transistors and such. Mine uses smaller tubes, and is less expensive. You can see it at http://www.niell.org
The CRT actually predates the nixie by about 55 years, but that certainly doesn’t detract from the nixie’s appeal…
oh, that’s interesting…I should have looked it up. There must be a cool history of the vacuum tube somewhere that would be fun to read. I saw a few links on about.com, but I want the whole thing :-)