Nixie tube is a cold cathode lamp filled with gas (typically neon with some argon at a low pressure, mercury is sometimes added for longer life). It is used for displaying numbers or other symbols. It has one common anode and multiple cathodes, whose shape forms individual characters.
Applying voltage between the anode and one cathode, the respective cathode lights up (becomes surrounded by glow-discharge) and thus will display the character (digit). The principle is similar to that of neon glow lamps. Dan from the Czech Republic provides all the details on these facinating devices.
Nixie were used primarily before the advent of other displays, such as LCD, LED and VFD displays. Now they are no longer manufactured or fitted into factory-manufactured equipment. However, they are experiencing a renaissance and people like to return to them, particularly for the construction of a retro design digital clocks. Some constructers mimic design of the time when nixies were actually used, but there are also crazy anachronisms like clocks with blue or RGB LEDs used to backlight the nixies (!!!), clocks controlled by human voice, clocks full of SMD components and so on. A typical retro design includes traditional iron transformers, primitive logic circuitry like 7490, 7400 and 74141 nixie driver. Anachronistic design usually involves switching power supply, switching inverter of anode voltage, LED backlight, multilayer boards with SMD components, microprocessors (MCU) like AVR or PIC, DCF-77 or even GPS sync, remote contro, etc. :).
Although no longer in production, there’s still huge stock of nixies. They can be found in different old devices, but also new, unused. Small types were produced in very large quantities. Nixie with digit height up to about 2 cm are quite common and can be found in huge heaps in old stocks, old measuring instruments and so on, or bought for few dollars. (Especially in post-Soviet countries there are vast new old stocks of nixies with no use.) Larger types (about 2.5 – 4 cm) are relatively rare and the largest (5cm or more) very rare.
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There are several contemporary manufacturers of nice tubes actually https://www.daliborfarny.com/ for example