Tubes with "numbers" inside them

[Don Tillman]

   From: Per.Mattsson at mkv.mh.se
   Date: Sat, 04 Jul 1998 12:14:03 +0100

   I remember from 15-20 years back some lab measuring devices like
   freq.counters and some very hightech HIFI equipment like the Revox
   tuners had - I don't know how to describe them better than - "tubes
   with glowing numbers inside them".

As others have said, "Nixie Tubes".  I miss them terribly.

I've always thought that they would be wonderfully cool displays for
modern electronic music equipment!  (Arguably a hell of lot more
readable than that LCD disaster on my NAD CD player.)  At the very
least Nixies would be the appropriate display for a midi controlled
tube guitar preamp.  Or when one of Eric Barbour's creations gets
patch storage.

A web search finds the following:
http://www.wps.com/archives/decimal-tubes/index.html
http://www.public.usit.net/rfurr/images/nixie3.gif
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/7227/classifid.html
http://www.cs.orst.edu/~rpandey/images/nixie.gif

Oh wow, I remember these Wang calculators set up at the Boston Science
Museum around 1970!
http://www.dotpoint.com/xnumber/wang.htm

There's also a view of a Nixie tube display on a Smashing Pumkins
video; I think it's called "Rocket".

  -- Don