Here's the text in question... In a 2011 email to me, Roger Wolfe, a Burroughs engineer, recalled the team’s first fragile attempt: “We put the tube on life test overnight. When we came in the next day, so much cathode material had sputtered onto the dome of the tube that the numerals were no longer visible. We had invented a tube with a 24-hour life!”
After some tinkering, Wolfe wrote, they discovered that the addition of mercury vapor would greatly extend the tube’s life span. The sputtering had been caused by the accelerated neon ions striking the cathode. But when the neon ions collided with the heavier mercury molecules, their energy dropped below the point where they could damage the cathode. “We secured a tiny ampule with mercury sealed inside, wrapped a few turns of resistance wire around the ampule, [and] connected the ends of the wire to two of the [tube’s] pins,” Wolfe wrote. The tube was then sealed, and the team ran current through the wire, which heated and broke the ampule, releasing the mercury. In August 1955, Burroughs unveiled its new indicator tube at Wescon—the Western Electronic Show and Convention, in California—which was for many years the leading U.S. electronics event. Soon after, it began shipping the first tubes to customers. That December, the company filed for a patent on its “glow indicating tube <https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/d0/2c/b4/44e051c1df6bf3/US2833949.pdf>” [PDF] The devices were mechanically superior to the numeric display tubes still on offer from National Union: They had dedicated anodes made from wire mesh, and instead of hand-bent wires, the cathode numerals were etched out of thin sheet metal. The addition of mercury prolonged the tubes’ life span, eventually to more than 200,000 hours. On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 1:29 PM Dekatron42 <martin.forsb...@gmail.com> wrote: > There is some information in this article, presumably first hand > information from a Burroughs engineer, on the extended life when mercury > was added: > https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/dawn-of-electronics/the-nixie-tube-story-the-neon-display-tech-that-engineers-cant-quit > (just search for mercury). > > I also know of a few patents whoch describe this, but don't have the > numbers at hand, I do however think these were by Burroughs. > > /Martin > > -- > 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 view this discussion on the web, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/cf14f263-3901-4fef-8dbe-b80c9b66583ao%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/cf14f263-3901-4fef-8dbe-b80c9b66583ao%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- 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 view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/CAOX%2BRHL1%2BUdWEVj03jUKL6zBMUa4M153MEmvbq9mfczQ6xU%2BDg%40mail.gmail.com.
