Well some of us do!
Turns out the little "valves" full of numbers weren't valves at all but little doozies called nixie tubes.......
Nixie? - The name nixie comes from Numerical Indicator Experimental 1....interesting, no?
Anyway, nixies were widely used before the advent of fluorescent displays, LEDs, LCDs & the like and were made from the late '50s to late '70s.
I've seen clocks made using these bad monkeys and decided to buy a kit and build one for myself.....as you do.
Here's the circuit board
A few hours with a soldering iron and all the components & the Russian IN-8 nixie tubes were mounted.
There are even some blue LEDs to light the bases of the tubes, nice.
I'm proper impressed with this, here it is sat on top of some computer junk in a darkened room
The clock is controlled by a quartz crystal oscillator and some software on a PIC.
There are many operating parameters to tinker with, my favourite is the "slot machine" option - cycling of all numbers to prevent cathode poisoning of the tubes and increase their lifespan.
Check this out
Time can even be synchronised by an optional radio module or via GPS
All I have to do now is build a case to finish it off.....
How cool is that?
Fucking well cool I can tell you!
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