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.
On Tuesday, September 11, 2012 9:02:16 PM UTC+1, Jens Boos wrote: > 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 > -- 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]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neonixie-l/-/9Sa6QQ1BWC8J. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
