Cold War phone Nixie clock

By Ben Everard. Posted

This article was originally published as part of HackSpace magazine, which has since been incorporated into Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.

Cold War phone Nixie clock

We’ve marvelled at the work of Paul Parry (aka Bad Dog Designs) before in these pages; here’s one of his latest builds. Paul has got his hands on some Cold War-era military field telephones, and, of course, has turned them into Nixie tube clocks.

Screenshot 2023-07-10 at 11.19.02

Both telephones are housed in bakelite enclosures; the lighter-coloured one (shown here) is a Russian TA-57 telephone dating from 1968–1975; the darker one is a Polish TAP-67 dating from somewhere between 1968 and 1974.
Both phones feature programmable RGB LED back-lighting to show off the Nixies in their best light, four Z570M Nixie tubes, and tell the time accurate to plus/minus one minute per year.


Ben Everard

Ben is the Editor of HackSpace magazine. When not wrangling words, he enjoys cycling, gardening, and attempting to identify wild mushrooms.

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