About¶

A project by Igor Kuvychko (LinkedIn): a desktop display that is enjoyable as an object and useful as an instrument, and an excuse to understand two kinds of cold-cathode tube properly.

Sources¶

John and Robin Acton, Dekatron – The Story of an Invention, Resurrection 61, Computer Conservation Society.
The National Museum of Computing, The Harwell Dekatron / WITCH.
Ericsson 1954 Dekatron catalogue, transcribed on electricstuff.co.uk.
Industrial Alchemy, Dekatron glow-transfer counting tubes: dekatron types, speeds and fill gases.
Threeneurons' Dekatron Shield, the reference A101 design for this project's operating values and circuit topology.
Datasheets and design references are listed in the repository's references.

Acknowledgements¶

The dekatron controller and power-supply boards were made by PCBWay, who sponsored their fabrication. Ordering was easy and smooth, and their website gives a lot of information along the way, including a step-by-step walk-through of how a board is made. The boards arrived a week after the order, sealed with a desiccant pack and clearly labelled, with clean milled edges (no break-away tab remnants to file).

The dekatron boards as delivered: sealed in bubble wrap with a silica-gel desiccant pack and PCBWay's order labels

As delivered, October 2026 (QR code blurred).

Licences¶

Text, diagrams, photographs and hardware: CERN-OHL-P v2.
Code (firmware, tools, and this site's JavaScript): MIT.

Third-party datasheets, historical documents and images keep their own rights; this site links to them rather than copying them.