“This clock was originally going to be known as the Victoriana Clock after the Victorian hobby of putting objects under glass domes until a well respected Nixie clock builder called Paul Parry informed me that it looked like a Victorian Tantalus. A Tantalus is a lockable rack for decanters of spirits and would be on display in any fashionable Victorian house, so having a similarity to this it is now called The Victorian Tantalus Nixie Clock.
I have always had an idea of putting nixies under glass but when I received the first glass dome I ordered a few years ago out of curiosity I was put off due to it being very rough looking. I recently managed to get some smooth matching glass domes from PV Electronics that were ideal for the project. The next thing was to get matching colon tubes and the solution was 12 x 100 mm rimless test tubes.
The clock is built around the PV Electronics Spectrum ZM1040 kit which I have modified to act as a ‘DINK’ kit (remote tubes). Another modification was to replace the neon colon indicators with LEDs as I could not find a big enough neon bulb to do it justice.
OK, on with it!”