Kuan:
Imagine forming wires into the shape of numbers, 0-9, and stacking them on top of each other a couple of mm apart. Put the stack in a vacuum tube, run current JUST through the wire in the number shape you want, and set as many of these side by side as you need to display your number series (The number 1,867,413.768 would require 11 nixie tubes, for example - 13 if you wanted to display the commas). Because the numbers were in stacks in each tube, your depth of focus changed a bit when looking at a display. On older tubes each number might be as much as 3/4" closer or further away from your eyes as the number next to it. probably contributed to some of the spaciness of the 60s!
Here are some sites that display them in action, including someone who built a nixie tube wrist watch just because it had never been done!
http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~wwl/nixclock.html
http://www.sphere.bc.ca/test/nixies.html
http://www.amug.org/~jthomas/clockpage.html
Tkamiya:
Progress is wonderful - as an undergrad I would spend days or weeks at a time flipping through the multivolume Citation Index (Imagine every phone book in California merged alpabetically
) and looking up references, then driving to the various libraries from Santa Barbara to San Diego if I was in too much of a hurry to wait a week for inter-library loan to cough up the 1922 copy of 'Journal of Archane Alchemy' or some such title.
Now you do a weeks work in 10 minutes with Google or on line citation searches, do your own Boolean screening, and often download the abstract or paper. Just amazing! And when you consider the rate of increase in new technology, what will the world be like for our grandkids? Diamond technology nano devices, smart dust, implantable nano factories to overcome diabetes, smart clothing to match moods or blend with surroundings and provide wireless internet connection to your sunglasses/display/cell phone/PDA.