Ferranti Plc

Frank Walters

Peter Eric Krebs

In a gas discharge display panel consisting of a matrix of discharge cells defined by gas filled cavities in a block and having cathodes formed by sets of conductors on an end plate sealing the cavities and in which the matrix includes priming cells which are energized to provide from their discharge UV radiation to prime the other cells of the display, at least some of the conductors, except where they form cathodes of the priming cells, are thickened to space the end plate from the block and permit penetration of the UV radiation to the conductors at the ends of the other cavities.

Gas discharge display panel

A d.c. gas discharge display panel consists of a rectangular array of discharge cells suitable for displaying alphanumeric characters surrounded by a circular array. The two arrays share one common set of conductors and are addressed sequentially by reducing the potential on the common conductors in turn by a glow transfer device extending around the circular array. The other conductors of the circular array may be commoned to result in a radial pointer whose position around the rectangular array can be changed.

A gas discharge display panel has a glow transfer device extending along one or both edges of the panel and consisting of a row, or rows, of cavities extra to the display. One electrode of the, or each, transfer device is common to the conductor associated with the display cavities at that coordinate and the other electrode is grouped with others in threes to a transfer conductor so that three-phase addressing of the transfer conductors causes a transfer glow to move along from cavity to cavity. The transfer glow changes the potential of said common conductor to enable discharges to form in the associated display cavities suitably addressed by potentials applied to selected ones of their other conductors. One transfer device can be used for writing and the other, a short time later, for erasing, thereby providing a variable brightness display.

Gas discharge display panel having an array of discharge cavities and a

A driving circuit arrangement for a gas-discharge display device consisting of an array of discharge lamps applies to the array a discharge retaining voltage composed of a voltage less than is required to maintain a discharge and a voltage equal to the magnitude of a `half-pulse,` the use of two coincident half-pulses being sufficient in addition to the retaining voltage to strike a discharge. To extinguish a discharge in one or more of the lamps the voltage equal to a half-pulse is removed temporarily from one of the conductors associated with the lamp, thereby reducing the voltage across all the lamps connected to that conductor below the level required to retain a discharge, and a compensating voltage of magnitude equal to a half-pulse is temporarily applied to the other conductor of those lamps in which it is desired that the discharge not be extinguished.

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Bury, United Kingdom

Frank Walters