Unlike most folks here, I do not have any background in electronics nor exposure to the electronics perspective of nixies and glowing tubes. However, I do go way back with nixies, too. I started as a computer software developer in the 1970's and worked on Burroughs systems for years. Burroughs machines had neon and nixies as part of their design. So through the lifespan of neon, nixies, numitrons, LEDs, LCD, VFD, TFT, etc, I have been interested in the glowing things and the progression of the technologies though this brief history of a few decades. I really didn't think a lot about nixies between about 1980-2010. In the early 2000's I thought it would be nice if I taught myself a bit about electronic. I figured it would be useful or at least quench a curiosity. I started building B.E.A.M. toys and then progressed to doing on-the-chip gadgets the leveraged these amazing PIC and Atmel microcontrollers. I was really excited about the features these little chips had. And I started to experiment more and more learning ever so little about actual electronics, but a lot about these little ucontrollers. A few years later, I was talking with a friend about some of the self-teaching I was doing building tiny low voltage toys and robots. He is an LED display freak and he asked me if I knew about these things called dekatrons. I hadn't heard of them. So I looked into it and discovered that there was crossover into the old nixie work that I lived in decades ago. I couldn't believe (still cannot) that you can get such wonderful old display tubes and make them do amazing things like you all do here. I was hooked right there and then and got a kit from threeneurons and haven't looked back since (except to look back and buy more nixie stock and more projects).
I have been a pied piper for preservation of old computer technologies and software for years (https://mediaarchaeologylab.com/) so I added to this my passion to preserve and demonstrate these great glowing devices. Thanks to all of you for the advice and inspiration over the past years! I still do not know electronics well but you all have made me feel welcome and continue to provide lots of meaningful fun/learning. @nixiekeith http://www.glowtubeglow.com/ On Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 1:00:38 PM UTC-5, SWISSNIXIE - Jonathan F. 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 an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/a5f96a65-723d-41ca-8e45-9e9850975efd%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
