[Leica] Nixies

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

I bet somebody big money Dr. NO the first James Bond film was in black and
white. Why would I think that? I lost a whole dollar I think on that fiasco.

Underneath the mango tree
Me honey and me can watch for the moon
Underneath the mango tree
Me honey and me make boolooloop soon

--------------------
Mark William Rabiner
Photography
mark at rabinergroup.com


> From: Rei Shinozuka <shino at panix.com>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2010 23:10:05 -0400
> To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Subject: Re: [Leica] Nixies
> 
>   On 08/10/2010 08:20 PM, Lawrence Zeitlin wrote:
>> Rei,
>> 
>> Indeed you are right. I'm always amused when bad guys in movies trigger 
>> off
>> a state of the art nuclear device and the time to detonation is shown on
>> Nixie tubes, a half century old technology.
> My vague recollection was that the display in the Goldfinger Fort Knox
> nuke was composed of three Nixies (you remember, that countdown that
> ultimately stops at 0-0-7), but after careful reviewing this is not the
> case.  The digits in the film were well-formed like Nixies and were
> definitely stacked in depth like Nixies, but the illumination was
> clearly not the continuous cathodes of the Nixie.
> 
> Google and Wikipedia, as usual, were my friends:
> 
> ".. the atomic bomb countdown display in Goldfinger was another
> technology from the same period: edge-lit lightguide readouts. These use
> small incandescent light bulbs at the edges of plates of clear plastic
> stacked together with narrow gaps between them. In each plate, a single
> numeral is formed from a series of "dimples" drilled from the back side.
> The plates are assembled in a holder so that their edges are not easily
> seen. A bulb shining in one edge will cause little or no light to be
> emitted from the smooth faces, due to the optical phenomenon known as
> "total internal reflection". However, the drilled dimples are at a less
> obtuse angle to the approaching light rays, and have rough surfaces,
> therefore scatter the light more nearly perpendicular to the plane of
> the plates' front surfaces, where it can escape to be seen by the
> viewer. Thus, the digits appear as a group of bright white dots
> apparently floating in a small dark space without any visible support.
> Contrast this with nixies, which display figures as continuous lines
> broken only by the fine anode mesh and the lines of other digits which
> may lie in front of the lit digit, always glow in the pink-orange-red
> range, and are usually placed behind red or dark orange filters to
> enhance contrast. Although the white(ish) light of edge-lit displays
> could be filtered to any desired color, historically this was almost
> never done."
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ANixie_tube#Were_these_in_Goldfinger.3F
> 
> Here's a guy who made a clock out of edge-lit display technology and LED
> illumination:
> 
> http://users.rcn.com/ted.johnson/erc_clock.htm
> 
> 
> YLSNED (You learn something new every day.)
> 
> -rei
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information