I don’t mean BETTER. That’s a different conversation. I mean cooler.
An old CRT display was literally a small scale particle accelerator, firing angry electron beams at light speed towards the viewers, bent by an electromagnet that alternates at an ultra high frequency, stopped by a rounded rectangle of glowing phosphors.
If a CRT goes bad it can actually make people sick.
That’s just. Conceptually a lot COOLER than a modern LED panel, which really is just a bajillion very tiny lightbulbs.
A nixie tube is a bunch of tiny lightbulbs shaped into numbers in a single pack with different pins each turning on a number.
Clearly the modern number display is better in many ways, but you were asking for coolness.
I think Nixie tubes are actually a kind of neon lamp rather than incandescent bulbs; but yes they are very mid-20th century.
They’re fluorescent tubes, yes. I wasn’t specific about what kind of lightbulbs.
I got a bunch of them to try to build a divergence meter, but I’m too intimidated by the ungodly wiring it would require.
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Woah, those are cool! I’m going to buy one just as soon as I figure out where to put it.
Technology Connections has an excellent video on them. Though, that’s not saying much, all his videos are fucking gold