The NIMO tube.
 

Of great interest (on youtube) is a homebrew power supply for the cathode ray based NIMO digital display from IEE in the late 'sixties.

Never seen anything by Fran Blanche before. She appears to have a brain the size of a planet!

Re: The NIMO tube.
 

Excuse my ignorance, but what is NIMO, please?

Re: The NIMO tube.
 

This is a video, presume it’s the one in question.
https://youtu.be/xmWg7CtN0Ac

Re: The NIMO tube.
 

(That's the one!)

The name was trademarked for this product, but i don't know what it stands for.

Superficially they look like a nixie, but are miniature CRT's generating green images on the phosphors at the top end, via stencils. I had never heard of them before either.

Re: The NIMO tube.
 

Yes she's a very interesting person, I'm a long time subscriber of hers. That NIMO tube was really interesting, a huge investment in technology and tooling at exactly the wrong time with better display technology just around the corner.

Andrew

Re: The NIMO tube.
 

Should have gone to Wikipedia!

Re: The NIMO tube.
 

(I totally take Wiki for granted these days!)

There was an even clumsier type of digital display used at one point in the USA- it had 10 etched glass or plastic slides stacked sequentially, with a small shielded bulb above each one-- thus a 5 digit display required 50 little bulbs. In it's favour though, unlike NIMO it didn't require 1750VDC to drive it, and didn't emit x-rays..

Re: The NIMO tube.
 

I thought X-rays didn't happen until a lot higher than 1750V EHT.

I also found Fran's "shock/horror" about 1750V from a current limited EHT source somewhat at odds with her gleeful approach to the real killer source on the Jacob's Ladder in another video.

Re: The NIMO tube.
 

I have watched a few of Fran's videos, all good fun, luckily my wife is a microbiologist (with doctorate too) and we don't fight for bench space!

Re: The NIMO tube.
 

I also watched Fran's Nimo video earlier this week, and it put me in mind of another CRT based character display used in some electronic railway signallers track diagrams.

They were about the size of these Nimo tubes, but rectangular, and unlike the Nimo they were scanned with a raster, so any character or symbol could be displayed.
I've tried to find a picture, but had no luck.

Re: The NIMO tube.
 

Re #7, When I was with Plessey in the early 1970's we had a frequency counter, I think by Racal, that used that sort of display.

Re: The NIMO tube.
 

I like Frans videos but I do wish she wouldn't speak so slowly. Get to the point! :S

Re: The NIMO tube.
 

In the nicest possible way there is definitely an element of (The Fast Show) Professor Denzil Dexter in the presentation style!

Re: The NIMO tube.
 

The British Transport Film covering the Shenfield Electrification deals with these indicators, and shows the circuit panels which generate the characters.