The Nixie Machine Clock is another installment in the line of unique and beautiful creations MB&F has accustomed us to. Designed by Frank Buchwald, it is part of the MB&F M.A.D. Gallery and features six decades-old glowing Nixie tubes.
What is a Nixie tube, you ask? It is basically a neon-filled glass tube encapsulating a wire mesh shaped like numerals or various other symbols, used starting in the 1950s to display information using glow discharge. Though their usage declined towards the end of the previous century, Nixie tubes are now seeing a resurgence of sorts amongst nostalgics and vintage electronics aficionados. This is exactly the kind of people MB&F’s new clock is created for.
Each of the Nixie Machine Clock’s six glowing digits is displayed by an original, remarkably well preserved Z568M Nixie tube 90mm in height, manufactured in East Germany during the 1960s. These tubes are arranged in three pairs: for hours, minutes and seconds, or day, month and year.
Buchwald’s Nixie Machine Clocks are all handmade and require a great deal of time and meticulous effort to create. This means that only about 6 of them can be made every year. Just 12 units are set to be released, each signed by their creator and priced at about $27,000.
