A Glow Counting Tube Read-Out Technique and Its Application

The cold cathode counting tube, also called the decade glow transfer tube, is used principally in preset counter, timing and gating circuits. The number stored in the tube is often required to be recorded. This paper describes a technique whereby the content of the tube is recognized and read out through a carrier signal applied to the anode and 10 detectors connected to the 10 cathodes. The readout is of the nondestructive type since it does not alter the content of the tube. A large number of glow tubes can be conveniently read out in this manner simply by connecting all corresponding cathodes together. The carrier signal is then successively distributed to their anodes. An example of such an application is given where 19 channels of four glow tubes each are read into an IBM card punch.