Developing The Nimo Display Tube - The Untold Story!

At last, the truth can be known! IEE internal documents sent in by a viewer who worked on developing the Nimo Tube tell the long and frustrating tale of its design, development, manufacture, and early promotion. Lets get to it!
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[@CuriousMarc]

I love it when someone randomly watches one of our vintage electro-monkeying videos, then says - great job, uh, you know, that’s the thing I made! And goes on to spill the beans on the real engineering story, usually quite messy. That’s what we live for. Celebration of engineering!

[@ojkolsrud1]

Hi, Marc! Cool to see you here!

[@FranLab]

Messages in bottles, floating out there for sure...

[@conwaytwt]

You were probably really REALLY tempted to name this video "Finding Nimo" 😜

[@td3993]

Finding Nemo prob woulda drawn a mass of unexpecting viewers,too.

[@GARCKY]

KZbin's reach is remarkable. People, of course, search for themselves and what they have done, so it's likely that that's how Mr. Velas found your video. in the mid-1980s, I designed a project for Popular Mechanics magazine. It was a small pipe organ or calliope that was buildable in a typical home workshop. Three years ago, while searching for pipe organ videos, I encountered a video of my design being played by a fellow who had built it from the magazine article. I contacted him and we had a great conversation. What were the odds of that happening? History lives on in KZbin videos, it seems. Thanks for sharing this story with us!

[@SumeaBizarro]

We are using a revolutionary technology for storing and sharing information, and we are just so used to it that we instantly forget how amazing it is and how important preserving some of these things is as our technology continues. It is a little bit offtopic, but right now Flash content on internet is going through a bit of preservation effort. To some lengths, even piracy is "evil good" as it does factor into preservation especially with older software and data. One day things we take granted on internet right now, maybe youtube itself, would need efforts of digital preservation and compatibility. Though youtube as entity has kept it's stuff viewable from oldest uploads on platform, even though in backend they had to make new players compatible or convert old media for that end, without it affecting users for now.

[@ethylhexyphthalate]

Engineer 1: "What if we call it the YOU Tube?" Engineer 2: "That is the DUMBEST idea I ever heard!" ALL LAUGH

[@750kv8]

#13 @ 31:50 Almost.

[@heerriiwa1111]

Thank you Joe for your record keeping and generous donation

[@ticanito74]

...but what were you doing in Bad Pyrmont? That's the real question!

[@kamalmanzukie]

my name isn't joe it's manuel

[@RobertGallop]

I’m so glad you got this! Just imagine how much COOL history is being lost sitting in boxes in basements, and eventually finding the trash can when grand kids etc have no idea why great grandpa kept all these “magazines”, and thinking, certainly no would care to have this, or if it is important, it must be in some library...

[@zaprodk]

Awesome to see this information is now secured and saved :)

[@lbochtler]

im starting to contemplate scratch building a nimo tube. i do have the equipment to build the innards, and run an experimental, demountable version. i just lack the glass blowing equipment. Though i doubt there would be enough interest for me to even attempt it.

[@jonathanvanier]

@@glasslinger YES! That would be terrific! (Love your channel by the way.) @Ibochtler you should absolutely contact her!

[@750kv8]

DO EET!

[@dentakuweb]

I usually don't find business type stuff interesting but this ended up being a fascinating bit of tech history.

[@dashcamandy2242]

35:04 - Reference to Mr. Gumpertz, whose letter you read at the beginning? (Around 7:15-ish) What a fascinating trip through the past.

[@mp6756]

Wow what I treat to see the inside of 1960 product campaign. Along with the inner geekdom. Thanks

[@michaelbeverly215]

Number 11 ("Cathod Igit") probably should be spelled "Catho-Digit".

[@russellhltn1396]

"For more information circle 602". Boy that brings back memories of reading magazines "back in the day".

[@essr4580]

It’s crazy to think how many of these tiny events can drastically change the world we live in, progress and the direction we head in is not as inevitable as some people (formally including me) think

[@jonburne1]

Only discovered this channel a few days ago. Fascinating. Held my breath several times during the BINA-VIEW repair. Never knew the amazing engineering that went into the Saturn F1. After watching your "128k Subscribers" I felt a bit guilty subscribing so I became a patron so I hope you will forgive me.

[@wreckage-vs5jv]

Great story. Reminds me of finding the house from The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane ten years ago and getting an email from the current owner.

[@TheSquaredM]

Thanks for returning to retro technology and interesting product paths from the past!

[@roberthorwat6747]

Bloody sub contractors!! What might have been. Would have been great to see a healthy mix of Nimo and Nixie tubes way back in the day. Anyway, thanks to Joe for sending in those precious artefacts and Thank you Fran for sharing it with us. Great History lesson!

[@andyhill242]

I hadn't heard of the Nimo tube until I saw your video, and I hadn't heard of your channel before this video. So the Nimo tube brought us together.

[@PeasGraveny]

I always enjoy my visits to the FranLab. Keep up the excellent work Fran, as I'm sure you will.

[@DIY-valvular]

It would be a hit if you make an interview with Mr. Vela. As a design engineer myself I enjoyed so much this material. The frustration in the early stages of development by Mr. JV is not strange for me, and workig in a third world company increrases the difficulties some times. We call that succession of set backs, failures and difficulties "Nadar en dulce de leche".

[@Kae6502]

Fascinating. Thank you Fran and thank you Joe! :)

[@MrUSFT]

This was great, Fran! As a software developer I really enjoy stories of development in other fields, and also being exposed to the problem solving of the brilliant people involved

[@bassmandanmartin3700]

Really excellent history!! Thank you for always being interesting and informative.

[@noakeswalker]

Nice to see more background to the RnD on the fabulous Nimo. I looked up that Fairchild multimeter with the Nimo remote display add - on, and yes, it did have nixies - it must have pleased IEE to get the Nimo into the add - on at least... A few actual products had Nimo displays then - you do wonder where they all are now -someone must have one to donate to you Fran, surely ? As for the other colours - hmm...that might be asking too much...

[@xspager]

Luz is light in spanish (and portuguese)

[@klif_n]

That's some interesting stuff. I love hearing the stories about how some of these teams worked and how the products were developed. Thank you!

[@essr4580]

I wonder if the chronovoice works like very early talking clocks, concentric magnetic tape discs

[@TimC_1964]

Have you or will you upload the documentation to Scribd?

[@russellhltn1396]

In retrospect, I suspect a large part of the problem was that by 1959, commercial transistor radios were 8 years into their run. By the mid 60, the writing was on the wall and interest in vacuum tubes was declining as an "obsolete technology" which would explain why the subcontractors failed.

[@SeanBZA]

Clock likely used a well developed technology at the time, a glass disk with the time recordings photographically etched into the glass, and then a lamp and photocell to read out the audio, with multiple tracks of audio recorded on the disk, and multiple photocells to get audio from each track of recorded data, so that a single control pulse recorded on a track provides a sync pulse to give a smooth audio recording. Common then in the telephone talking clock mechanisms, which used a similar thing to get a long lasting recording. Either one or two platters with tracks etched on them, and then you just have to have logic, either electronic or simple sequencer using a uniselector mechanism, to get those discrete audio tracks to blend together into a single track. Likely hours and minutes, making the mechanism easier, as you could have longer sequences of "arbitary hour", then "hours and", then "minutes tens" and finally "minutes digits" ending with "minutes" in a sequence of relatively simple logic. Total of 42 tracks to be spoken, along with an indexing track, and all could fit into a 33RPM record track in a single turn per segment. Bit of arrangement and you could use multiple light sources, or a simple set of electrical shutters, and reduce the photocell count as well, making it relatively robust and easy to maintain.

[@WideWorldofTrains]

Very very interesting!

[@TheMongooseOfDoom]

The Japanese above the display reads: エッソ　オーストリア号の ドップラーソナードッキング装置 I would translate it as: Doppler Sonar Docking Device aboard the Esso Austria This is the ship in question: www.vesseltracking.net/ship/esso-austria-5106873 It was built in 1962. I wonder if they updated the docking sensors at some point, or if that thing is still in operation.

[@luh2112]

Scrapped at Kaohsiung 16.09.1975.

[@TheMongooseOfDoom]

@@luh2112 Well, that settles that.

[@jonathanvanier]

Apparently it was built in France. I wonder what the European market was like for these nimo tubes? 🤔

[@jameswortley2515]

That was amazing Fran. Thank you so very much for sharing and educating us. Enjoyed every second of that. Also enjoyed your Saturn V vid too. Keep up the good work on educating us.

[@JackRussell021]

Have you ever tried to look up the old patents that IEE might have filed?

[@andyhill242]

Fascinating insight.

[@WiliiamNoTell]

Just found your Channel today! Thank you so much for sharing have a great day!

[@cthulpiss]

there's "Phosphor screens for current-sensitive single-gun polychromatic cathode-ray tubes" from 1971 available in interwebz. From IEEE....

[@seonor]

Moviola still exists as a company, just asking them about the Chronavoice is an option. They produce equipment for film editing and have done so since 1924 until today, just as an example Steven Spielberg's Munich, which won an Oscar for editing, was edited on a Maviola device. Magnasync bought Maviola in 1966 and merged the names. The Chronavoice was a product by Magnasync and earlier versions without NIMO-tubes were sold before the merger. There is also a short product review in the May 1956 issue of TV&Communications, page 42, of a version without the NIMO tubes.

[@wrtlpfmpf]

I believe there was a vector storage graphics terminal which included a 8x8 character shadow mask and one gun in order to "print" characters onto the storage phosphor.

[@AlanCanon2222]

29:45 each digit in the four digit display demonstrator shown in the photograph is controlled by a user selectable four bit register: the switches are labeled 1, 2, 4, and 8. Which means that a ideal complete demonstrator tube would have to have 16 guns, for $0-$F. (Four hexadecimal digits). I wonder what the internal logic was like to decode the binary into 1-in-10 gun selection. Probably discrete transistor wiring, though they could have had NAND gate ICs off the shelf in 1968.

[@christianelzey9703]

As for the time announcement thing...Of course I can't find it now...but there was a video on KZbin someone posted years ago showing a 70s era speaking clock machine-the thing you would call and listen to a recording telling you the time and date. There was a big magnetic drum about a foot in diameter and 2 feet long that contained circular tracks for each and every minute in the day, with a magnetic pickup that precisely moved from left to right in steps each minute, over the course of 12 hours. No tape!

[@wizlish]

Audiochron. There's a KZbin video of one running, with one of Bell Time Service 'voices'...

[@daveduley]

I wonder if you could team up with Dalibor Farny to recreate this tube? Are you familiar with Mr Farny? He makes custom Nixie tubes.

[@daveduley]

Who would have thunk there was a market for Nixie tubes. I think there's plenty of market for vintage electronics, especially displays. Crt clocks come to mind....

[@nophead]

Or Glasslinger, he also makes his own vacuum tubes from scratch on KZbin.

[@heyarno]

The burn in on a CRT is also due to the high operating voltage. Phosphor lasts much longer at lower voltages. I know in image intensifiers 6kV is considered the optimum between long live and brightness. The 2kV must be very gentle on the phosphor. I suspect the cathode in the Nemo tube is coated with barium and strontium oxide. Pretty advanced for it's time.

[@geofftaylor8913]

Great video. Thanks

[@CUDAbuster]

The analog equipment is so much more interesting to me than digital. Those Nimos are just plane cool, even if obsolete. Kind of like running a good tube amp for stereo vs solid state, the tube amp just has more character, even if the solid-state is more accurate.

[@altluigi5733]

👍👍👍😊

[@Chatsu8o]

I think "Cathod Igit" was supposed to be pronounced "Catho-digit". Which I really like as a name.

[@capolaya]

What a fascinating story!

[@Purple431]

I've haven't seen the NIMO DISPLAY TUBE in a long time Thanks Fran, love you ❤️

[@EVguru]

Having done some quick research, the Cue-Switch was a switch with a 12 image back projection system so the legend could be changed. Image link in comment below

[@EVguru]

photos.app.goo.gl/qV1KejwejhYpjS7XA

[@MLX1401]

@@EVguru Wow, thanks for sharing! Cue-Switch, the over-engineered weirdo button, we salute you o/

[@bzert281]

45:44 the ChronoVoice's "municipal" uses, were probably for use in police interviews. KZbinr Techmoan showed a tape deck widely used in UK police work (the dual-cassette job you see in on BBC cop shows.) A purpose-built stereo cassette tape recorder that would have the actual spoken interview captured, on channel A, and, at intervals, the spoken time, on channel B, as a time-mark. "Three o'clock, fourteen minutes, and thirty" "Three o'clock, fifteen minutes, precisely." The police-tape deck he found, was actually serving on board a UK warship. So I guess the MPs would use the same stuff.

[@michaelmoorrees3585]

Numitron, yes, were made by RCA. 7 segment incandescent displays.

[@mikepettengill2706]

Thanks Joe! And thanks Fran for sharing it with us. Cool video!

[@robertusa1234]

A good idea in 1958 that became completely Redundant with the invention of the LCD in 1969 and led display intruduced in 1968

[@MikeSmith-sh3ko]

Yeh but we are all sick to death of LCD now ,and the old stuff is so much more attractive

[@StevenS757]

So they were probably considered naming the tube the "Gumpy tube" after Donald Gumperts.

[@spehropefhany]

His obit from 2012: www.legacy.com/obituaries/latimes/obituary.aspx?n=donald-gumpertz&pid=157549059

[@MrLakridsbat]

I was totally unaware of the nimo tube before your other videos, found it fascinating and now i got a whole lot of backstory... i still would love to afford some nixie-tube displays, I think it's the orange glow that gets me...

[@quinntalley1681]

Happy New Year, Fran.Really enjoyed your video. Spent years working in high and ultra-high vacuum for semiconductor, high energy physics and analytical instruments. Pretty sure that the diffusion pump used to evacuate Nemo to HV was made by Varian. Probably the roughing pump, too.

[@arthurroberts491]

In the 1960s and late '50s every engineer was working on government contracts, and that continued until Apollo was cancelled. I remember the LA Times classified ads Sunday edition with 20 to 30 pages for engineers. If you were any kind of an engineer you could get a job in a day at any one of a dozen different companies. So, you want to build a new tube and you have to hire whoever is left, rather slim choices.

[@MarkPalmer1000]

I wonder if that frequency counter model from CMC was actually produced using NIMO display tubes. Every counter they made that I know of, including the ones under AN/USM contract, had standard Nixie displays for the time. I would have thought the cost of the NIMO displays would have been more expensive for that scale of test equipment.

[@stevenormandin2059]

that was such a cool video about the history of those intriguing display tubes and it tells you how tough it can be sometime to develop an innovating product

[@bf0189]

That was a super interesting story from Gumpertz! I agree completely... you need to learn how to autotdidact all the things through reading and experience so you can get the best results.

[@jasonthejawman5442]

Hello fran love your content nimo tube sounds really cool

[@SudaNIm103]

Anyone post this yet? F. J. Avella, "Phosphor screens for current-sensitive single-gun polychromatic cathode-ray tubes," in IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, vol. 18, no. 9, pp. 719-724, Sept. 1971, doi: 10.1109/T-ED.1971.17272. Abstract: Operational characteristics are presented for several CRT phosphor screens which exhibit shifts in emission chromaticity with changes in screen current density at a constant accelerating voltage. One type of screen utilizes a single phosphor, whereas another type comprises a mixture of two phosphors which differ in chromaticity and in the dependence of their luminance on current density. The most promising screens combine a phosphor having a sublinear luminance-current density relationship with one having superlinear behavior and produce color shifts from yellowish green to orange. By matching filters having absorption bands in selected spectral regions to the current-sensitive screens, it is possible to enhance both the contrast and the chromaticity shift. keywords: {Phosphors;Current density;Cathode ray tubes;Absorption;Image color analysis;Linearity;Color}, URL: ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1476594&isnumber=31689

[@zooblestyx]

This kind of video makes a fellow proud to be a retro tech geek

[@MrRadar]

The prices adjusted for inflation are: 25:00 $20 = $147.05 $5 = $36.76 $6.75 = $49.63 $25 = $183.81 $4.17 = $30.66 $35 = $257.34 $3.50 = $25.73 28:30 $76.50 = $562.47 $96.50 = $709.52 $110 = $808.78 50:20 $205.05 = $1,507.64 $222.5 = $1635.94 It really makes you appreciate living in the age of ubiquitous and cheap high-resolution displays.

[@rpiester]

The proposed name "Gumpy" was certainly in honor of the inventor Mr Gumpertz.

[@thelovertunisia]

Nimo is very similar to Nixie but without gas.

[@PicaDelphon]

Maybe another Nimo Project in the Future,,??..

[@brentdrafts2290]

Found Donald Gumpertz's obituary online, interesting guy.

[@hadleymanmusic]

I once had a part I took out of an old tv. It was a photon coupler? It was like a small rectangle tower with several small square open boxes inside I remember when I had the part findin out about it but I no longer have my lab. Thought maybe you could check into that and explain the part and what it does. At the time it opened a different direction of application in my mind.

[@johntaylor6992]

Was the "Gumpy" name suggestion an homage to Don Gumpertz?

[@Me11oIngenuity]

Cue Switches were readouts that were also push buttons.

[@markforster4984]

It started in 1959. That's when I started!

[@AlanCanon2222]

30:30 Abraham Fuchs won the naming contest for the fancy 1.5" CRT, and his reward was a 19" CRT.

[@batterymakermarkii2654]

Didn't some of the stuff I sent you a couple of years ago have some info on that tube?

[@TechneMoira]

Wait... did Fran actually say "this is assasinating" at 36:00 ? I agree though, Astra would have been a cool name for the product, far cooler than the then "product-O-matic"-like names they used in the forties and fifties. They **could** have called it the U-tube of course :P

[@paulbennell3313]

Things could've been so different. Imagine if this really caught on, we might've had the likes of huge McIntosh stereo recievers with Nimo tube digital frequency readouts...

[@JackRussell021]

If I could go back in time, I would have entered the contest with the name "youtube".

[@RoadRunnerLaser]

Gumpy? Perhaps they were considering naming it after Mr. Gumpertz.

[@cheebawobanu]

36:32 Oldsmobile;e Toronado. What a machine.

[@enquiryplay]

Great stuff! Was there ever a multi-digit prototype, or was it just a concept?

[@deltonviera2051]

Thanks fran great video😉

[@FilipLamparski]

Is Abraham Fuchs related to Fred Fuchs?

[@readmedottext]

Moviola is still in business.

[@tomservo5007]

47:12, the time announcer is in one minute intervals -- since seconds aren't announced, a lot less tape is needed -- I assume, one loop for the hour, and another loop for the minutes.

[@Laurabeck329]

I hope Abraham is related to Fred Fuchs

[@nickinnapa]

But does he?

[@wdavem]

WOW!!! Video Christmas... again!! Keeps my spirit aloft at a critical time. Can't thank you enough.

[@KanalFrump]

Fascinating. It would probably have been more successful if they had managed to get these out in the first couple of years before more inexpensive and simpler display devices made them obsolete. Also interesting to see how Dalibor Farny have had to go through many of the same technical challenges in figuring out practical vacuum tube production for his modern nixie tube products.

[@AugustusOakstar]

Bless you little lady, you are a credit to H. sapiens.

[@SueBobChicVid]

It appears the "Series 10" is a squared-off version. archive.org/details/196410InformationDisplay/page/n5/mode/2up

[@boscorner]

Abraham fuchs named it. he could have easily named it the FUCHS tube. He's more mature than I am for not making that choice lol

[@CharlesM-dp4xe]

The way it was named 'nimo' is somewhat comical. I can see how Fuchs thought up that name, if indeed it was actually an original idea. Nemo/Nimo just means No name, nameless etc. I suppose no one could think of a name so it just became nameless, and he won a TV for it ... that was way too easy. Hey I once won a 50 lb Tootsie Roll in a school contest for Fire Prevention week sponsored by a local radio station . I used, don't laugh now I was only 9 at the time ... "Don't blame the flame" What the hell am I going to do with a 50 pound Tootsie Roll ? "LOL" I wanted the Schwinn Sting Ray bicycle or 8 Transistor radio, ah well .

[@guffaw1711]

37:27 Joe couldn't be more wrong about how "T.V. making them more conscious of their actions" would play out 😂

[@oasntet]

Are you going to scan that document and send it to the Internet Archive? That's the sort of niche documentation that they love archiving for somebody a hundred years from now doing research into obscure devices...

[@wrtlpfmpf]

Actually those early speaking clocks originally work with optical disks. I have a copy of the original German recordings. This was later replaced by an elaborate system with 3 tape loops, and then this system with a magnetic disk. Here's the magnetic disk system being explained in a Children's show. kzbin.info/www/bejne/apKwon6oZalgbdE Here's the tape system, notice that there are "drums" for the minutes and hours which allows those to be read over and over again before it's advanced to the next hour/minute kzbin.info/www/bejne/mHeTiWBuis-NndU I think in the US there also were some drum-based systems.

[@SimoWill75]

32:18 my guess would be 'Catho-digit' pronunciation

[@frankowalker4662]

If they had'nt had the troubles early on, they would have been world leaders in display tech.

[@pinsandneedles7248]

This video better blow up

[@davecampbell9803]

Great video! I love Fran's deductive reasoning as she sub narrates the back story while reading those old documents.