I LOVE NIXIE TUBES!

Nixie Tubes are a lighting type, used to make displays, typically used for numbers / letters. They were kind of the predecessor to LED / LCD / etc. 7-seg displays, but were phased out pretty quickly due to their high voltage requirements (160V!!!), bulkiness and inefficiency (LEDs and other technologies are much better in these regards). They are pretty similar to modern neon lights and give off a similar glow, which makes them aesthetically pleasing.

I really like early electronic devices because of rather than in spite of their bulkiness and inefficiency. Sometimes it's hard to realize just how advanced our technology is nowadays just because it is so ruthlessly efficient. But if you look at an extremely old, room-sized computer and realize how revolutionary and insane that technology was, it really puts it into perspective that all of us, any person viewing this webpage, owns a personal machine several orders of magnitudes faster and several orders of magnitude cheaper and smaller than that. And that process only took like three decades or so, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Nixie tubes are kind of like that for me. We take modern seven-segment displays and computer screens for granted, but there's an alternative timeline where that sort of technology just doesn't exist or isn't practical for consumers. Unlike anything we see nowadays, nixies have a prominent glow and have "cloudy" and barred images. The glass chamber also probably adds to the mystique, as well as of course, their rarity.

Anyway, I'm glad that they live on through media even if they see no practical use anymore (justifiably so). Notably, sections of Portal 2 and Steins;Gate use them. I've decided to incorporate their asthetic into this site too.