Nimo tube

Nimo tube BA0000-P31

Nimo was the trademark of a family of very small non-standard CRTs manufactured by Industrial Electronics Engineers around mid-1960s, with 10 electron guns with stencils which shaped the electron beam as digits, with a similar principle as the charactron, but much simpler. They were intended as single digit, simple displays, or as 4 or 6 digits by means of a special horizontal magnetic deflection system. Having only 3 electrode types (a filament, an anode and 10 different grids), the driving circuit for this tube was very simple, and as the image was projected on the glass face, it allowed a much wider viewing angle than for example nixie tubes which Nimo tried to replace.

The German tube manufacterer Telefunken tried to sell an unlicensed copy of the design under the type number XM1000, but was sued by IEE in 1969 and lost, having to destroy all tubes already produced. Only a few survived, most of them not yet labeled.