On Nov 10, 2:57 am, jb-electronics <[email protected]> wrote: > and he insists that NU made Inditrons around 1940. I would love to see a > proof, but until now I did not get any responses.
Don't hold your breath. If he can show you proof of a production Nixie/ Inditron/glowing-neon-number-thing in the 1940s, what you really need to ask him about is the secret time machine he keeps in his garage. It is quite well-known that the basic design for a Nixie has existed since at least 1934 - the Boswau patent. However, the GI-10 is the earliest glow discharge display produced in any significant quantity, and I don't think there's any reasonable doubt about the GI-10's introduction date. If there were something released in production quantities prior to the GI-10, we would've encountered it already. Even the GI-10 itself was only manufactured in small production quantities, yet we've managed to collect several fistfuls of them over the years. I'm not even going to entertain the possibility of Telefunken Nixies in the 1940s. You might as well tell me the Germans developed a functional atomic bomb in the 1930s but never patented it or used it because they didn't want to infringe on US atomic bomb patents that would later be filed in the 1940s. I'm also *highly confident* about the 1955 date for the Burroughs tubes. This estimation is based not only on the dates of various ads and brochures, but on the filing dates of numerous patents and the date of the Haydu acquisition. It is not possible that the 6700 existed in production before 1954, because they didn't yet have the Haydu production facilities. It is not possible that any Haydu/ Burroughs Nixie existed before the 6700, because the 6700 was their first product. The Vari-Count ad dates to December 1955, and that is the first time we see a Haydu/Burroughs Nixie in a document that's dated to-the-month. No Haydu/Burroughs publication of any type has been found prior to 1955. The earliest Burroughs Nixie patent dates to 1956 IIRC, and there are no Haydu Nixie patents. It is not entirely impossible that somebody will eventually turn up a pre-release 6700 from 1954, but I'm confident the Haydu/Burroughs Nixie did not exist in a manufacturable state until 1955. A note on Haydu's role: Although the beam switching tube and Nixie were electrically designed by Burroughs, I think it's a foregone conclusion that Haydu production engineers were heavily involved in the high-volume refinement of these tubes. If you note the Stems & Sockets brochure, they're making a big fuss about the high-pin-count button bases they're using. I'm guessing the button bases are a direct result of Haydu production engineering. Micah Mabelitini http://www.decadecounter.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB.
