On 2012 Mar 13, at 5:23 PM, William Donzelli wrote:
Or General
Radio - they used edge-lit displays in some test
equipment.
NLS and General Radio are the ones that spring to mind, but there were
some military units that could have been HP. AN/TSM-16 maybe.
HP had 1-of-10 'thermometer-style'
displays in the 50s and
early-60s but
started switching to NIXIEs quite early (1959 or earlier).
I think they bought that technology? I can not remember who now - I
almost want to say from Beckman.
There were several manufacturers in the 50s (HP, Northeastern, I
think you're right: Beckman, others?) making neon decade counter/
display modules based on a design from RCA from the mid-40's. I have
several versions of the modules (
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/edte/
HP520/index.html#AC4) and equipment using them, another list member
provided a ref for the original RCA design in a list discussion a
couple of years ago.