Photograph by Andre w Argyle
A furniture maker by day, Andrew Argyle had on the shores of Hudson Bay. Constantly innovat-been making clocks for years when he discovered ing, he’s currently working on making the clocks that eBay had made previously obscure nixie wireless so he can send anything in text form to tubes easy to obtain. These old neon indicator the display: stock prices, temperature, dates. tubes were all but abandoned in the 70s with the When asked about other, possible variations, advent of LEDs, but along with nostalgia for vinyl he admits to trying to adapt a “bizarre Russian and typewriters, nixies have experienced a revival. alphanumeric display to show the time and have
Like other electronics enthusiasts, Argyle began a playable version of Pong on it.” He also wants to turning the tubes into glowing reminders of the add a Geiger counter, which he sees as the nixie’s past, present, and future. “I like to try and recycle “spiritual cousin.” components from old computers,” he says. “The The rage for nixies has spawned numerous web complexity and beauty of old technology is often pages with schematics, as well as those selling lost. This way, at least something is preserved everything from miniature to jumbo tubes in bulk, from a disposable past.” custom-made clocks, and even nixie wristwatches.
The motherboards for his clocks come from After all, says Argyle, “there’s nothing like seeing the scrap piles of friends and family, the interface the warm orange glow of the neon from your own cards from various high-tech salvage places, and creation.” —Arwen O’Reilly the wood for the cases from the local lumberyard
— unless, that is, he’s mounting the nixies in a >>Nixie: glowingtech.com chunk of 400-million-year-old coral he collected
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