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

On Tuesday, 11 September 2012 23:44:24 UTC+1, Jon wrote:
>
> 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 
>>
>

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