The Misadventures of Quinxy von Besiex truths, lies, and everything in between

When Nixies Ruled the Earth

I've always been a fan of vintage electronics, and the most beautiful component in that marvelous age is the nixie.  I've come across a number of clocks built using nixies, but none so fine as the NixiChron made by Jeff Thomas.  When I saw it I just had to have it.  The beauty lies not only in what it looks like, but in the details of its design.  It is everything you could imagine it would be.  It's GPS synchronized, so it's always milliseconds away from accuracy.  It displays room temperature, which isn't a bad thing to know.  It can sound the hours by morse code, navy bells system, traditional table clock, single or double chime, and more.  It has a wealth of display.  It has all sorts of daylight savings time and time zone options.  I have always loved the idea that towns used to have central tower clocks that let everyone in the town know what time it was, and let them synchronize their watches and clocks to that.  It's a beautiful idea, a central heartbeat for the town to regulate itself around.  And so I wanted to bring that concept into the home, and this is the only clock worthy of being a central regulator for my house.

I got one of the very last of Jeff's NixiChrons, and feel truly fortunate that I did.  He said he had to discontinue them because the costs for parts had simply become unworkable.  When he started the cost of Russian nixies (Russia is far and away the biggest supplier of new old stock nixies) was pretty cheap, but once the Russians found eBay they were suddenly commanding very high prices for these nixies, and it just wasn't cost feasible for Jeff to keep making the clocks.  What a pity, there are other nixie clocks you can find, and I own a few others, but nothing comes close to this one.