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Steampunk Gadgets and Timepieces and Accessories

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Steampunk on Etsy, a global handmade and vintage marketplace. Stirling Engines. By Roger Wood. Timepieces - Retro Thing. E. Barbour writes, "Former Philips engineer Ronald Dekker is famous for his website full of unusual construction projects. He now has built a digital clock that uses Dekatron (or decatron) tubes as displays. " Decatrons feature a ring of cathodes driven by a control voltage. They were first introduced in 1950, and this is the first I've heard of them. They're the forefather of Nixie tubes, which usually contain ten cathodes in the shape of the numbers 0 through 9, and a wire mesh anode.

Dekker decided to build a decatron clock controlled by a modern PIC microcontroller. He explains, "Surfing the web, the most popular thing to make with a decatron seems to be a spinner. The circuit and software is now complete, and the only thing remaining is the case. Decatron Clock Project.