Nixie Tubes...

So I was planning on going out this evening to catch a 100th blip. But it's looking miserable, and I'm nice and warm in my study.

And I'm afraid I've fallen into a bit of a 100th blip cliché, and made a montage from my Uber-Geek watch.

Anyhow...I am a self-confessed geek, and there's nothing wrong in that. As Bill Gates is quoted as saying, "Be nice to the geeks at school, you'll end up working for them some day".

So what's a Nixie Tube? Well first of all, it is NOT a vacuum tube. It's actually a variation of the neon lamp (a cold cathode tube). It's made up of a load of cathodes shaped as all the numerals surrounded by a wire mesh anode. As a voltage is applied to the correct cathode, the individual numbers light up. Only thing to watch, is its around 180v on my wrist to get these lit up!

They were first invented in the 50's as some of the first digital displays. Their heyday was in the 60's and especially in Russia, where they lived on for quite a while.

I love them as they are quite "60's space race", and "Retro Geek Chic".

Vintage Nixie tubes are now a big hobby fascination, with many people making various clocks out of them. But this guy went further to see if he could make a functioning watch. With only two tubes, it flashes the hour, then the minute as you tilt it up to your face.

They are made to order out of B5870 tubes. A famous wearer of the Nixie Watch is Steve Wozniak, the designer of the Apple I and Apple II computers.

It was really hard to take a good photo, and I had to do lots of experimentation (with my compact camera). In the end, I had the camera on the tripod, just a little lighting, but then had the flash on so that the exposure was not too long (as then the Nixies were flooding the picture). However, to stop the flash completely drowning out the light from the displays, I covered up the flash). Nothing like trying to trick you're camera.

As a small geek celebration, here's a few favourite geek sites to read.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/
http://evilmadscience.com/
http://xkcd.com/
http://www.nasa.gov/