Local Man Rambles About Obsolete Tech: One Plane Displays!
Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with a common-law wife, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.
For some reason, I've always found old, obsolete display technology fascinating. I'm hoping some of you out there will too, since I drone on about it for over four minutes here. Still, one plane displays are pretty obscure and hard to find information about, so hopefully you'll find your four minutes adequately spent. If not, let me know and I'll see about giving you four of my minutes to make up for it.
UPDATE! A clover! It's not a tree, it's a clover. Thanks, commenters. Man, I'm an idiot. Tree? Jeez. And, it's great to see more information on these things, so thanks to those who posted.
For some reason, I've always found old, obsolete display technology fascinating. I'm hoping some of you out there will too, since I drone on about it for over four minutes here. Still, one plane displays are pretty obscure and hard to find information about, so hopefully you'll find your four minutes adequately spent. If not, let me know and I'll see about giving you four of my minutes to make up for it.
UPDATE! A clover! It's not a tree, it's a clover. Thanks, commenters. Man, I'm an idiot. Tree? Jeez. And, it's great to see more information on these things, so thanks to those who posted.
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That was really interesting. I did not know anything about those.
One tiny criticism, if you're planning to make videos regularly - it's worth considering positioning your cam and screen somewhere you can see both at the same time. Glancing off camera all the time is a little distracting.
Aesthetically thats really really cool, I didnt quite get how it works, is it basically kind of like a projector?
Also I think it's supposed to be a clover.
Shouldn't that be "Area man"?
I'd guess the "tree" is a four-leaf clover
I have a couple of those displays from an old radar testing site. Interesting, but not very useful when a bulb burns out. I disagree about Nixie tubes, by the way... being neon displays, they are actually very low power. Many years ago, I used them to make a darts scorer, which still works fine.
Very interesting, but I also missed how it works. Was the number of unique images limited by the number of lamps on the back?
Enjoyed this. I thought clover too - but the stem would be green. Is Jason a font savant?
Interesting. A chap were I used to work collected old nixi(?) tubes and similar stuff but I've never seen these. I find it noteworthy that for all the practical limitations displays like these have, the image quality is really high.
Nice stuff, if you have more, please share it.
But:
- put off the glaring monitors behind your back
- use a proper mike
Bye
Jan
That was really cool. Thanks!
This is rather cool, and serendipitously some of my colleagues who just came back from Japan brought a kit for such a device and because of seeing your article a few hours earlier I knew a little back story.
The kit is a paper craft with a micro-controller with some settings to adjust speed and other things. The system is based on 4 lights with removable film sheets with 4 images each. The kit includes several different sheets.
I have posted some images on Picasa here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mark.whiting/OnePlaneDisplayKitFromJapan
I actually remember these as a kid. I was fascinated by them for the same reason he mentioned, the soft focus, projection-type look the images had.
I'm still curious how they work though. The bulbs are in different positions but the different images show in the exact same spot.
Thanks for the video and for bringing back a childhood memory!
i used to have a few black boxes that seemed to be of a related technology.
same rigging of bulbs in the back, and lights guides with each bulb activating one image.
on mine, the letters or numerals were etched into clear glass plates which were stacked one in front of the other, so whichever plate was illuminated was visible though the non-illuminated plates.
I can't quite figure the layout for the opaque solid images shown here.
seems to be a rear projection system with
mini-film transparencies with mini-lenses to enlarge the image? or maybe something even more fiendishly simple?
Neat tech. Thanks!
Also, another video suggestion: quit moving so much. Your hyperactivity, combined with a low framerate, makes for a really disorienting video.
Many moons ago, a co-worker of my father gave me one of these displays that was a pull from a nuclear submarine missile launch panel. I remember hooking it up to a battery and seeing messages like "Misfire" and "Ready" along with a radiation hazard trefoil.
Additionally, this might be interesting to you:
http://www.tubecollection.de/ura/gluehlampenanzeigen.htm
all my questions are answered by the Germanic diagram.
You know, i fully expected to request my four minutes back, but that was really cool, thanks!
BTW- if anyone is looking for one to play with;
http://cgi.ebay.com/2-One-Plane-Digital-Display-Units-Vintage-IBM-GE-Lamps_W0QQitemZ330346437601QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item4cea2e9be1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65:12|66:2|39:1|72:1205|293:1|294:50#ht_500wt_1101
It's not a tree... It's a clover! It really makes sense for a clover to be present on a slot machine, even if it's only a three leaf clover.
Does anyone know what is the material that the screen is made from? Can this be purchased?
Those displays were made by (among others) a company called IEE, which is still in business.
http://www.ieeinc.com/
In case you want some data on the one-plane displays, I have a thick binder of 1970 display technology data sheets.
IEE also made an amazing little CRT called a NIMO. It had the same projector technology incorporated into an electron beam display, with 10 little electron guns projecting through a metal number stencil plate.
You can see one installed in a box and wired up as a one-tube clock here:
http://mcnally.cc/clock.htm
This type of display was very common in military devices (navigation equipment in aircraft, in my direct experience) in the 70s and 80s. I remember LORAN and OMEGA systems that displayed the time interval values using very tiny (maybe 1X2CM display area) single-planes for each digit place in the display. As I recall, you could actually pop an individual digit display out and replace it in case it wen bad. The fascinating thing was that each digit display actually had 10 or more tiny rice grain-sized incandescent bulbs for each integer (0-9) plus some extra characters like N,E, W, S, +, -, etc.
Thanks Jason, that was a fascinating, informative piece. I hereby grant you 40 minutes of my life to make ten more vids. More more more!
Very interesting. These were used in the various shots of computer activity in THX1138 (trailer, see a couple of glimpses about 1min in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naso7_DFno8&feature=related).
I think Woody Allen's 'Sleeper' used them as well.
That was very interesting! If you get that display up and running in your Bug, I want to see video. It would be the coolest thing ever.
Cheers man!
They use technology similiar to this on old submarine sonar suites for input buttons.
Your video reminded me of the pre-CRT arcade games. Many games used some form of film and projector. You may find other interesting displays from the game collectors that help with www.klov.com.