Okay I will contribute with my own story: I first encountered the tubes back in the 1980s.. (I was 14 years or so) I was given a PCB from a clock with 4 nixie tubes..well as kids sometimes do I took it apart, dismantled the 4 nixies (I did not know they were called that back then - they were just wierd displays) - and put them in storage and forgot all about them while playing with meccano, lego and electronics... Later (1990 or so) I again encountered nixie tubes when I bought my first frequency counter at a local flea market - a Philips....neither did I think twice about them this time.. I just used the counter until I gave to a friend in the mid 1990s... Okay now time jumps to around 2001 where I by chance stumbled over a HP 5245L counter ..and dismantled it..at the same time I found Claus Urbachs kits (I think it was) and bought one..and threw together my first clock with the nixies from the HP counter Within the same time frame I happened to find Raymond Wieslings Geekklok/ FLW kit.. and the lot of B7971s from "usmintquarters" I think they were called? I managed to purcase approx 25 of them before the prices exploded... I got in touch with R. Wiesling back then and ended up buying and receiving a GeekKlok kit - and later a FLW. I have so far only assembled the Geekklok... Wiesling recommended the Nixie forum back then.. and I have been here since then... and while collecting /dumpster diving/ scavenging other instruments and gadgets I kept accumulating instruments with nixies and loose nixies of course.... My friends know I like them so once in a while someone shows up with tubes or instruments with them. :) I have no idea how many loose nixie tubes I have now..hundreds at least (when I don't include the approx 2000pcs IV-6 VFD tubes I still have in my garage). Apart from the IV-6, I stick to the US and German nixies.. I find them more pleasing than the Russian tubes :) I also have ended up with quite a collection of instruments wit nixie displays.. I haven't got the heart to tear them apart if they work ..so my house is beginning to resemble the lab from "The Dish" :/
And the four tubes I pulled from that clock back in the 1980s? I still have them here in my collection somewhere! :) .. Dan On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 7:00 PM, SWISSNIXIE - Jonathan F. < jfrech...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I made this post to share my story how i found my way to nixie-tubes, and > i'm curious how everyone else came to this hobby :) > > My way to nixie tubes was a "double accidental". The very first encounter > with this type of tubes were around 2001 when i was around ~10-11 years > old, along my way to school there was a little local scrapyards, where me > and my friends used to go and collect all kind of materials for more and > less usefull constructions of electronic. One day we tear apart a old > calculator that had "strange looking number tubes" and we took a few of > them home, after a few tries to get them on with a lab power supply and the > few search request with the internet of that time didn't bring up anything > helpful, so the tubes ended up in a storage container, which ended back at > the scrap yard again.. > I never seen a vacuum or nixie tube again until 2013. At that time i > ordered a few GM-Tubes from a bulgarian seller on ebay, he put a few IN-12 > as a gift in the package. I instantly remembered my old scrapyard find, and > started to reseach these type of tubes just for curiousity. From there on i > fell in love with the typical orange glow that instantly remains of "old > age" (from my point of lifespan :-) ) and just looks very beautiful. I > quickly discovered that there are alot of different types of nixie tubes > around, so i started collecting them. I also started to find out more about > old electronic technology, and started to collect all kind of vacuum tubes > and circuits. About a year in collecting tubes and stuff i noticed that i > will run out of space.. so i had to decide to only collect nixie tubes > since they don't take up to much space. Today, 5 years later I own around > 240 different types of nixies with around 600 tubes total. > > Im very interested in how you got to the tubes, since there are a lot of > people here that have seen encountered nixies when they still were a normal > electronic part and not something considered rare or collectible. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "neonixie-l" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/ > msgid/neonixie-l/0e0779ca-1764-4907-b325-f71aca47ff8b%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/0e0779ca-1764-4907-b325-f71aca47ff8b%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/CAJot61UFshgZ8Y0DCK5rz%3DnS%3DZOCpons7c3bDK0KU%2BB-imaqPA%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
