Nixie tube history: The role of Ericsson

[jb-electronics]

Hi folks,

as some of you may know, besides Nixie tube collecting I am also
interested in the history. I am writing an article, and every now and
then I stumble upon something that makes me believe that I will most
likely never finish it ;-)

Here is the confirmed US Nixie tube history: National Union was the
first to sell a readout tube product line (1954), although Northrop
aircraft filed promising patents as early as Nov 1950; however, these
tubes were never manufactured by Northrop (not a single one of these
tubes has been found as of today). National Union was closely followed
by Burroughs in 1955 who then offered their "Nixie" tube. But National
Union beat Burroughs by the nose.

Anyway, I was doing some casual research for patents filed by Ericsson,
and found patent "GB739041", file is attached. The funny thing is, this
baby was filed May 9, 1950, predating the first Northrop patent
(US2618697) by more than half a year. The word "improvements" in the
patent title suggests that this patent bases on other concepts already
around at the time, but I cannot find out which patents it refers to.
Any ideas?

The most interesting thing is that Ericsson was probably the first
company that commercialised the idea of a Nixie tube (and thus thought
it worth to be patent-protected, that is the logic here).

I feel that the European history of the Nixie tube needs further
research. Has anyone been able to piece together the European side of
the story?

To be honest, I don't know if this patent is an entirely new discovery,
but I could not find it on Randall's page:
http://www.scientificsolutions.ca/patents.htm

Jens

[Jon]

Jens,

 

I guess the purist might argue this is not a classic nixie, but more the precursor of the B7971. But, let's forget that - it's a nice piece of detective work!

 

Of course you do actually have pictures of these tubes on your website already! Doesn't this patent describe a very similar tube to the Ericsson tube that Tim Laing found on eBay in January last year and kindly shared some pictures? It had the development code VX9110 and you kindly hosted some pictures for him. Links to the pictures and discussion below.

 

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/neonixie-l/R_9Zz6S-ZUM/discussion

http://www.jb-electronics.de/tmp/vx9110/

 

 

This patent nicely brings together the nixie and dekatron histories, in that the three inventors here from the Tube Design Group at Ericsson were also instrumental in the development of the dekatron. Acton invented the classic ETL two guide dekatron design, though it was first published as a scientific paper in 1950 by Bacon & Pollard and Acton was only acknowledged rather than being a co-author. The final inventor on the patent you found (Williams) was the inventor of the GC10/2P miniature counter tube. It was a remarkable period of innovation in that lab.

 

Cheers,

 

Jon.

[Jon]

Forgot to add another comment I had after reading the patent...

 

The tube appears to use a similar approach to the National Union tubes, where any individual electrode could be used as an anode or a cathode, depending on what glowing shape the user wanted to display. It's been stated before that difficulty in driving the NU tubes using the circuitry of the day might have contributed to their design being superseded by the simpler to use Burroughs nixie. And indeed perhaps something similar played here - looking through all my collection of Ericsson materials, I can find no evidence they ever sold this tube - the first ETL nixies seem to be the GR2G, GR4G, GR10G etc of the mid-late 1950s, which are more conventional in operation / design.

 

Jon.

[Dekatron42]

Hi Jens,

 

I posted the patent here on the forum this August, https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/neonixie-l/e3jIeheCiCQ , along with the three- and two-headed dekatron patent - I'd love to see one such dekatron running!

 

You have been able to search for almost all patents for a few years time now, at least all that have been scanned and catalogued, at the EPO Espacenet website here: http://www.epo.org/searching/free/espacenet.html - I dug up a few of the Dekatron related patents this summer and posted them here on the forum I was actually looking for other patents related to AVO Valve Testers but found these Dekatron patents along the way. I also found a huge number of display related patents covering Nixies and also earlier technologies as well, so have a go at searching yourself. Just beware that you can spend whole days trying to track down what you are looking for and you sometimes also end up reading a lot of other interresting patents as you get distracted by other nice items!

 

It is quite interresting to search for patents, not only for the items that you are looking for but more so to look where the inventors have been employed as that shows which companies got information from which other companies via the inventors. Digging through old literature will also give you a lot of information on what patents to search for, the hardest thing to solve is when the patent numbers have been either misprinted or mixed up with other patents. Just learning what words to use when searching takes up a lot of time, especially since different companies name the same thing differently and names and words are not always spelled correctly in either the original patents or in the searchable database.

 

/Martin

[kay486]

Whoah, those tubes are absolutely awesome! Do you have any other interesting tubes on your site that are unlistet?

[John Rehwinkel]

> I posted the patent here on the forum this August, https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/neonixie-l/e3jIeheCiCQ , along with the three- and two-headed dekatron patent - I'd love to see one such dekatron running!

The 3-headed one looks like the old ETL logo - that would be something to see.

- John

[Alek onet]

Hello everybody,
there is some parts of my aparature for nixies, however this film is
about lightbulbs.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejjZy8X16GY
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wdku2H6yhE
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYSqJxekfYs

best regards
Alek

[Dalibor Farný]

Excellent,

Where does the machije from the third video comes from? It doesnt look as a DIY :-)

How did You manage to get the lead in wires? I was absolutely unsuccessful in dealing with companies from Asia..

Dalibor Farný
http://dalibor.farny.cz

sent from Samsung Galaxy Pad

Dne 13.9.2012 8:00 "Alek onet" <aleksand...@poczta.onet.pl> napsal(a):

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[Instrument Resources of America]

What do you know of Haydu Bros. and their readout tubes, in the
early 1950's?? Burroughs bought them out in about 1956 if I recall
correctly. Ira.

[jb-electronics]

Hi Ira,

> What do you know of Haydu Bros. and their readout tubes, in the early
> 1950's??

Burroughs launched their Nixie tube campaign as early as 1955, maybe
earlier, but that's not for sure. I am in contact with an old newspaper
archive at the moment, hoping to resolve that issue once and for all.

Haydu Brothers and "their" readout tubes is very misleading. They did
NOT develop the Nixie tube. Before being purchased by Burroughs they
were not involved in the field; it all started in 1954 when Burroughs
purchased Haydu Brothers solely for their vacuum tube making equipment.

The idea of the Nixie tube has been around much longer, the early 1950s
as can be seen by the patents we have collected. The key person is Saul
Kuchinsky who once worked at National Union and then later went to
Burroughs (in 1954). He must have brought a lot of expertise with him.

> Burroughs bought them out in about 1956 if I recall correctly.

Almost, they started advertising in 1955 as you can see here:
http://www.jb-electronics.de/html/elektronik/nixies/n_hb106.htm?lang=en

Perhaps you refer to the "Nixie" trademark claim which was from 1956.

Jens

[Dekatron42]

Hi Jens,

 

You can find some material on the Burroughs - Haydu Brothers here: http://www.radiomuseum.org/forum/nixie_and_trochotron_haydu_vs_burroughs.html there is also other information written on the Trochotrons and Nixies there, Emilio Ciardiello has more information on this and you can try to contact him and ask him directly. I've emailed him previously about Trochotrons and gotten very good help from him.

 

/Martin

[jb-electronics]

Hi Martin,

thanks  for the link, I know this article. I also had contact to an engineer working at the Haydu facilities in 1954 shortly after he merger. The Burroughs and Haydu Brothers story seems fairly clear to me.

The question remaining (and originally intended to be asked) is: what is the role of Ericsson? When did the first start to develop indicating devices? Based on which patents?

Jens

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[Jon]

Great question Jens!

 

From my research on Ericsson (admittedly dekatron-oriented), I have not come across another early patent which is obviously directed to cold cathode indicating tubes other than the one which describes the GR10A register tube. Later on around 1960 they filed some patents mentioning nixie tubes, but as I remember those were really associated with the invention of the auxiliary anode dekatrons.

 

Looking across the material that I have, I do not believe that Ericsson had a major research effort in cold cathode display tubes - they were concentrating on dekatrons and applications for them. Although the patent discussed earlier in the thread was filed in 1950, there was definitely no display tube in their product range in the early 1950s, so I suspect Ericsson did not commercialise a nixie until the second half of the 1950s at the earliest.  Consistent with this, Tim Laing's VX9110 prototype carries a date code which seems to be from 1956. I also have some Ericsson literature from 1965 which describes the Digitron (their brand name for nixies) and says that it is the product of "some five years' development", which would again point to them not really getting serious about nixies until the end of the 1950s.

 

Perhaps we can complement the patent info by looking at the date codes on Ericsson nixies in peoples' collections? The Ericsson date code is made up of two capital letters (eg. NL, RF, WG) which is normally printed underneath the model number. Does anyone have an Ericsson nixie with a code beginning with a letter earlier in the alphabet than S (1960) ?

 

Jon.

[kay486]

Somewhat related fact: here in czech republic nobody uses the term nixie tube, we call them just digitron. Also VFD tubes are reffered as itron.

[Jon]

On Friday, September 14, 2012 9:21:56 PM UTC+1, Jon wrote:

 

>Perhaps we can complement the patent info by looking at the date codes on Ericsson nixies in peoples' collections? The Ericsson date code is made up of two capital letters (eg. NL, RF, WG) which is normally printed underneath the model number.

>Does anyone have an Ericsson nixie with a code beginning with a letter earlier in the alphabet than S (1960) ?

 

My apologies, that should of course have been R, not S for 1960.

 

It was a long week...

 

Jon.

[Tomislav Kordaso]

More curiously, here in Croatia- in fact all countries of former Yugoslavia, generic term for all electronic calculators was and still is digitron.
Name came from a factory Digitron in Buje, Croatia, which made all kinds of desk and office calculators. Their products could be found on each office desk around the country and name stuck.
Anyone knows who originally coined Digitron name?
Tomislav

Sent from my mobile device

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Subject: Re: [neonixie-l] Nixie tube history: The role of Ericsson

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[kay486]

Ive been wondering what was the first side view tube?

[Instrument Resources of America]

Hello Jens,
Much of what I "know" is just from what I have heard, read, or
vaguely remember, from here, there, and elsewhere. I do have one
article that I managed to find from somewhere, that I am sending along
for any help that it may be to you. It is enclosed here as an
attachment. If I find more I will be sure to send it along. Ira

[jb-electronics]

Hello Ira,

thanks, I know this article. It is somewhat misleading concerning Nixie
tubes.

I talked with a former Haydu (then Burroughs) employee and he confirmed
that the Nixie tube came from the Burroughs side as can be seen by some
other sources as well.

For me, this issue is now fully resolved. It is articles like these that
will probably keep up the rumours and urban legends ;-)

Jens

[threeneurons]

So it appears that the Haydu Bros made the components (little metal fiddly bits) that went into a vacuum tube. They also then did the same for Burroughs, for such things as the individual metal numerals. Burroughs saw the value in it, and probably decided to do it "in-house", but the easy way. Just buy the supplier. Maybe, this was a trend in the 50's (?). If so, the Haydu's other customers also went "in-house", but by building their own facilities (?). That would've made Haydu an attractive buy, for Burroughs.

Then Burroughs developed the nixie, all on their own. Maybe, with a little "insight", from the likes of National Union.

[Dekatron42]

Jens,

 

Have you asked the poeple running this website: http://ericssonhistory.com/Default.aspx?epslanguage=EN ? They have a lot of old Ericsson manterial online which describe Ericsson products, amongst them the RYG10 Trochotron. I have not looked for any Nixie related material there but they might know. There are also other webpages in the UK mentioning the phones that Ericsson used to manufacture, I know that one such document also mentioned Dekatrons and that might also be a source for Nixie information.

 

/Martin

[Alek onet]

Dear Dalibor,

I'm sorry for delayed answer.
 In march 2012r. was destroyed latest polish laboratory, where prepared special uv-tubes.
This laboratory was part of "ZWLE" called also "Polam" or "Polamp".
http://cemi.cba.pl/zwle.html

I rescued all what was possible. That's why i have some half-professional maschines for electron tubes and materials.

Alek

[Jakub Cepela]

Hello,

sorry for reviving this old topic, I found it by accident when looking for informations about one nixie.

I think it might help you, in attachment is photo of lab sample nixie from Ericsson.

Unfortunately, I don't have any more information about it, it is old photo which i download from ebay...

Jakub

[jb-electronics]

Hi Jakub

thanks! But hey, I think I know this tube ;-)

http://www.jb-electronics.de/html/elektronik/nixies/n_rd125.htm

Jens

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[Jakub Cepela]

Heh, nice! You have so many nixies, you may consider adding option to sort them by manufacturer ;)

Jakub

[kay486]

Hello, i have been wondering if you own any other interesting/unusual tubes that arent listed on your site?

[jb-electronics]

Hi,

yeah, I really should add a manufacturer category. The problem is that this whole thing is still a static HTML layout and for sorting options I would need to add PHP in order to make it a little bit more practical for me. We will see... ;-)

And I admit, I have been very slow in uploading new Nixie tubes in the last year which is mainly due to my efforts im making Nixie tubes. Right now I have to move because I recently switched universities and that is eating up quite some time too. But I can promise that I have a full box of Nixie tubes (that is, at least 20 or more), very interesting types. Japanese tubes, one Indian tube (!), as well as the "N, S, E, W" compass Inditron by National Union, as well as several other beauties! So: stay tuned ;-)

Jens

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neonixie-l/-/Nem6o_UVyjUJ.

[kay486]

Oh wow, thats sound really interesting! I cant wait to see some photos of these!