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1960's Incandescent Numerical Displays (Patreon)

Published:
2020-10-25 02:23:27
Imported:
2021-10

Content

Yes kids, before LEDs came along they had plenty of super cool numerical displays being used all over the place.  In this video I show some rare 7-segment incandescent displays and compare them to their more popular cousins, the one plane projection displays.   Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/cE66VK_ib4U

Files

1960's Incandescent Numerical Displays

Yes kids, before LEDs came along they had plenty of super cool numerical displays being used all over the place. In this video I show some rare 7-segment incandescent displays and compare them to their more popular cousins, the one plane projection displays. Enjoy! Join Team FranLab!!!! Become a patron and help support my YouTube Channel on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/frantone #LED #bulb #Apollo - Music by Fran Blanche - Frantone on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/frantone/ Fran on Twitter - https://twitter.com/contourcorsets Fran's Science Blog - http://www.frantone.com/designwritings/design_writings.html FranArt Website - http://www.contourcorsets.com

Comments

Christian Elzey

Numitrons are my favorite display device. Nixies are great and all but I made a clock with 6 RCA DR2000 numitrons and can't get over how great they look, with the weird flat topped envelopes with the stem sticking up. These "light box" displays are pretty cool too, must have been cheaper to produce and easier to get spare bulbs for. Maybe easier to "plug and play" these modules into panels too.

Anonymous

I'm looking forward to see this. But it is 5:38 am in Denmark winter time and the kids just woke me up.

Anonymous

I have seen many versions of incandescent seven segment displays. Back in the 1970s, before CRTs were in cockpits, these type of displays were used to enable sunlight readability. A good example is the F/A-18 A/B/C/D Hornet. The panel directly in front of the pilot had incandescent seven segment and alpha-numeric displays all lit by tiny incandescent bulbs. LEDs were far too dim when they were new in the 70s and only came in red for the longest time. Using an incandescent display was the only way to ensure sunlight readability, and high reiability, in a challenging lighting environment. The newest generation F-18 Hornet uses an LCD in place of the very expensive banks of incandescent displays that required occasional bulb changes. These incandescent displays were used widely in commercial aviation as well. They were built in to the instruments themselves, or placed on their own instrument panel modules. Since the naked warmth of the incandescent lamps gave off a sort of amber light, often times they would put a layer of light blue plastic in front of the bulbs which corrected the color to true white. The housings these displays were built into were all metal, like you expected. But I think the big version your have has so much space between the bulbs, and was not densely packed, they could get away with a plastic housing. I have dozens of these kind of incandescent displays in all kinds of sizes. I would be thrilled to donate a bunch to the "Fran Storage Room" inventory. These were all made to the highest quality possible since they were for aerospace use. If you want a bunch of examples, please let me know.

Anonymous

Thanks Fran for an enjoyable look into old style 7 segments and it will be great to see them in a working project.

Anonymous

Pretty cool stuff, or is that a contradiction :)

adrian

I saw these a lot in the seventies - they were used on the first electronic petrol pumps. Probably for sunlight readability as Matt describes.

Jessica McIntosh

That looks so much like the display you designed. I found the video, March 2018. That is a really neat design. Very awesome as always. :D

David Peaker

According to wikipedia (so it must be true), the mission control room in the film Apollo 13 was a purpose built set. So small details like this could have been changed due to availability, aesthetics or any number of reasons. It may be similar to the squawk box you made a few years back, which looked way better than the original.

Anonymous

Especially enjoy your videos on displays. Thanks!

Anonymous

I'd venture a guess that there was a minimum AWG wire specified for those 7-segment displays, possibly with a minimum length lead, with the wire itself used as a heat sink. The same concept is used for wire-to-breaker connections.

Mike Hughes

Try the solder iron test on the plastic to see if it is a thermosetting or regular thermo forming plastic- Thermosetting would make sense- otherwise overtime it would turn into a gooey blob!- very interesting though Thanks Fran, for showing us those bits of tech from the future -when I was a kid...!! hahaha- brought back happy memories.

Anonymous

More please.!