All-tube digital clock, seven years in the making
By Tom Whitwell 
posted June 26th 2006 4:25PM
posted June 26th 2006 4:25PM
[Via Music Thing]
posted June 26th 2006 4:25PM
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Wow... that's dedication. I got frustrated in 3 minutes at Best Buy trying to pick out a clock... this guy spent 7 years "getting" one. Oh well, patience never was my strong point. ;-)
totaly tubular!
sorry, had to be said
The clock will also double as a BBQ.
this also doubles conveniently as an industrial strength room heater! 103 tubes being heated at the same time would be perfect for roast kitty!
Aren't the terms "all tube" and "digital" contradictory?
"Aren't the terms "all tube" and "digital" contradictory?"
It's not just that the output is digital (i.e. numbers) - but the reason the thing is so complicated is - and I'm guessing here - that it works like a tube computer - the earliest computers used thousands of tubes but were as digital as any PC.
Imagine having this on your nightstand when your cellphone alarm goes off. Whoops
"Aren't the terms "all tube" and "digital" contradictory?"
Depends. Digital displays display digits.
(wow. That's a heck of an alliteration.)
It looks like this thing has analog electronics running a digital display. (Digital does not mean "performs binary calculations", although that's what people often think it means...)
No, what about all those "all tube" digital computers we had for decades, like the IBM 709 I learned to program on.
so Whats a tube...
It's taking as along to download the movie from their site as it took him to make it, mirror anyone?
Um, to the person commenting about how Tubes are not Digital--you're totally wrong there. Just because something is in a vac tube does not mean it's analog. Many digital computers (yes binary, all that) were built with tubes. There's even Analog to Digital converter tubes out there.
Know your history man! :)
Wow. Can anyone spreken ze deutsche and tell us how many watts it takes to tell the time?
i believe the entire point is he used the tubes to create a computer (digital) clock... the tubes would act as transistors?
shot in the dark, i suppose... maybe an enlightened one would care to explain it
I hate to disappoint Friedhelm and send him back to the drawing board, but he forgot the AM/PM tube. Europeans keep doing that with their clocks for some reason. :^)
I did a quick and dirty math and had
375.6 Watts (!)
as result.
And yes, he rebuilt a TTL circuit, which is solely digital, if I understood him right (hard to read if you're not familiar with that stuff).
ah well if I didn't miscalculated and understood him right this hefty clock uses: 715,5 Watts approx.
bummer
section "Die Transformatoren" (transformers):
25A+4A+10A=39A at 6.3V equals 245.7W (for heating)
0.470A at 190V equals 89.3W
0.075A at 2x180V equals 27W (I suppose both sources deliver 0.075A)
0.040A at 2x170V equals 13.6W (same as above)
This sums up to 375.6W
Though I'm maybe missing something.
Now this would make a really great Heathkit! Does anybody out there remember building your own electronic equipment via a kit?
Now this would make a really great Heathkit! Does anybody out there remember building your own electronic equipment via a kit?
OMG.! Jack Nicolson typed "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"
These pictures are like a horror film as the camera zooms in on the details.
SO glad I speak another language. Or there might be bad dreams for me tonight.
It's a 24 hour clock, Tim nooblet. ;^)
I remember the old heathkits.....along with those old radio shack P-boxes.....back when radio shack actually carried electronic kits!
Holy Horseraddish! By the time it gets done counting one month I'd be broke from the power bill. It might replace the heatpump however.
He made a digital clock using tubes exclusively (instead of a microchip) and he designed the circuit so that the tubes operate as non-linear as possible (as switches) , so that it could do Boolean algebra operations (digital). He also used special tubes for numerical display.
A digital circuit can be made with tubes, tranzistors, a microchip (many tranzistors inside), or even relays. Other components more unusual can also be used, in general whatever has an input where a small amount of energy can control a much larger amount of the same kind of energy. This is what a tube a tranzistor and a relay have in common. But also a faucet could be used if it was designed to allow the high pressure water flaw to be controlled by a much lower pressure water flaw (instead from your hand) and the less linear it responds the better. Then the electrons would be replaced with water and the wires with pipes! You can even make a computer running software with ...faucets including RAM memory. And yes, such systems have been made and used successfully as the main computers in military aircrafts because these systems cannot be affected by radio-interference (electronic war) and radiation. These are hydraulic systems (with a sort of non-linear micro-faucets) with fluid and gas versions.
For a seven year long effort I would rather prefer to make a "smart" digital device using faucets in my backyard, running ..Water XP!
I've got to admit, this is a pretty nifty little device, but it has one major drawback (besides the power consumption of course). Can you imagine the agony just one of these tubes blowing would cause? He'll probably have to spend ~3hrs testing each and every one of them til he finds the offending component and making sure it wasn't more than one of them.
Tubes don't have to be analog. While audio tubes are used in "analog" amplifiers, tubes were used in Digital computers before transistors became practical. Using tubes to make a digital clock would, theory wise, be as easy to do as a transistor digital clock (pretty much all digital clocks). The impressive part of this is that tubes are much more fussy to work with than transistors, use more power, put off more heat, and are more expensive. Gotta admire that thing though!