A new scale of two circuit

Abstract

A circuit for a serial binary scaler using cold-cathode trigger tubes is described. The two stable states of a single tube (conducting and non-conducting) are utilised as the two states of a scale-of-two, enabling each stage to be made up from a single tube plus a minimum of other passive components. Tests of one version of the circuit did not indicate that simplicity had been achieved at the cost of reliability. The large output signals and visual display may be advantageous, but the maximum speed is restricted by the tube de-ionisation time.