What Happened to Nixie Tubes? Why They Disappeared, and Who Brought Them Back

Nixie tubes glowed inside almost every counter, voltmeter and desk calculator on earth, and then every factory that built them went dark. What few people know is that one man sealed a working tube in 2013, and has been making them by hand ever since. Burroughs began volume production at Plainfield, New Jersey in 1957. Each tube held ten thin metal numerals stacked one behind the other in neon and mercury vapor. Pull one cathode to ground and only that shape lit, hanging at its own depth in the glass. The usual explanation is that the LED arrived cheaper. In 1971 an LED digit cost 3 dollars and 95 cents in thousand lots, roughly double a Nixie. You will learn: How ten hand-shaped cathodes produced a floating orange numeral Why an LED digit cost more than a Nixie tube in 1971 How a 1967 royalty dispute pushed Japanese calculator makers to another display Why a single-chip calculator had no pins left for ten cathodes Why Burroughs replaced its own tube with the flat Panaplex panel How Dalibor Farny rebuilt the process inside a Czech chateau If you ever worked on a board carrying 170 volts, you probably remember touching it once. Tell me in the comments. Subscribe for quiet, careful histories of the displays we grew up with. #NixieTubes #DaliborFarny #BurroughsNixie #NixieClock #Panaplex #GasDischargeDisplay #VintageDisplays #RetroElectronics #DeadTech #DisplayHistory