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.
On Friday, September 14, 2012 10:42:55 AM UTC+1, Jens Boos wrote: > 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 > > > -- 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/-/9-I2dbmSg1EJ. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
