Yes kids, before LEDs came along they had plenty of super cool numerical displays being used all over the place. In this video I show some rare 7-segment incandescent displays and compare them to their more popular cousins, the one plane projection displays. Enjoy!
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#LED #bulb #Apollo
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#LED #bulb #Apollo
- Music by Fran Blanche -
Frantone on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/frantone/
Fran on Twitter - https://twitter.com/contourcorsets
Fran's Science Blog - http://www.frantone.com/designwritings/design_writings.html
FranArt Website - http://www.contourcorsets.com
Satisfying video
An interesting video. I'm trying to find the name/make/type of some numerical displays I played around with as a teenager in early 80's, they were old parts then. They were separate displays, each containing 10 pieces of clear plastic within, with each number (0-9) marked on each piece of plastic via slight drill bit indentations in the shape of each number, 10 small filament lamps were at the base, separated by silver foil, a specific number was shown by illuminating the corresponding lamp, with the light travelling up through the plastic sheet & diffracting out, at said drill bit indentations to reveal the selected number, have you heard of these type?
When I was 8 to 10-ish (30 years ago) I thought building a display like this. But I didn't because I thought it's ridiculous to make a 7 segment display using light bulbs. Apparently it's not as ridiculous as I thought.
People who make movies use whatever works for a "shot", details that don't advance the story are not important to them.
One possible reason for using the 7 segment displays for the movie is that because they do show up better off-axis, it's one less thing to worry about when setting up camera angles.
The colour (temperature?) Of incandescents is much warmer than LEDs, and the rise time of the filaments is a welcome change from the immediacy of solid state.
you know i've been wondering how those displays worked. I always thought they were flip over like on password on the early 60s. you might want to look into gameshows sometime. Still i love the apollo content. Its fascinated me since i was a kid:)
The one plane projection displays were used in a lot of 1960s game shows such as Password.
These are elegant displays, beautiful functional industrial design. They certainly evoke a bygone age…
Those projection displays were a staple of 1960's game shows. They were used in the contestant podiums in the original Jeopardy with Art Fleming and the score display for the original Password.
FRAN ARE YOU SELF TOUGHT ENGINEER LIKE JERI ELLSWORTH?
Now this sounds like a really fun 3D-printer project to do. Anyone Agree?
Oh no! The Apollo 13 movie lied? 🙄
I wonder if the plastic casing could be bakelite or something similar? That would explain how they can handle high heat from the incandescent bulbs.
Not a very good design since you have to remove the entire assembly from the rear to replace a bulb.
I also had a question for you oh, and that is do you think it would be possible to 3D print a projection display. Or how about the simply make a projection display using LEDs so that I could have this nice beautiful round characters?