Wow, now that is cool! Will have to keep my eyes open for one.

Holey cow! I've never seen VFD's in tube style cases before, or an electronic digital clock that primitive before for that matter.

One cool thing I didn't notice until I turned the radio on in the dark is a blue electroluminescent dial scale. Although it's very dim, really only noticeable in the dark. I'm not really sure how bright it's supposed to be.

I also noticed a very soft very high pitched ringing (you have to put your ear right up to the unit to hear it at all), that either goes away, or changes pitch depending on the setting of the brightness control for the clock.

I actually can't find much on this radio, other than a few other pictures online. This model's not even listed in my sams index.

Hey Adam, that's cool! Awwwww I want one!

That is definately cool! I guess that's what came after nixie tubes.

It may have been designed that way on purpose -- so that the radio dial wouldn't light up so bright it would wake a person up. If the sleep timer were being used (and if this radio had one), the user would want the radio to put him or her to sleep with music; any kind of bright dial scale would defeat the purpose of the timer, unless the user was one of those rare people who could sleep through anything, including bright lights (!).

I didn't realize there were VFD tubes, either. Dieter's Nixie World has plans for a VFD tube clock:

http://www.tube-tester.com/sites/nix...l-100/sylv.htm

Phil Nelson

Wow, that VFD clock is very cool. Too bad you can't find a model number, I'd love to search for one.
And thanks for the mention of the Tamura Lumitime clock. I looked on Ebay for one and there were no clocks but there was a seller with an NOS Lumitone clock radio. Brand new in the box.
I was outbid on the auction, then the seller contacted me and said he had another new one from his uncles storage locker. It arrived last week, expensive but looking great as I took it out of the box. Everything looks new and works perfect, not bad for an item sitting around since 1974.
Thanks for mentioning some very cool early digital clocks in this thread, they are a favorite of mine as well.
A GE/Telechron was my first digital clock radio when I was growing up and man was I disappointed when I saw half of the display go dead and found 2 lightbulbs and a mechanical movement. Wish I still had that one too.. lol

The model number is C4390B. I just couldn't find any schematics or other service information for it, or figure out the year it was made.

Looking at the different vfd tubes on that site above, this clock radio uses the GE Y-1938 http://www.tube-tester.com/sites/nix.../y-1938-bl.htm You can see where the tubes I have used to have the blue coating which is mostly worn off now.

Does it have a 4-digit date code sticker somewhere on it? Second digit is last digit of the year it's made, last two digits are the week number within that year. I'd bet it was made in the 70s unless the year digit is 7 through 9, then it was probably made in the 60s.

I just did a Google search for "GE C4390B" and this was the top result:
http://books.google.com/books?id=XgE...page&q&f=false

The Popular Science article with a picture of your clock radio is from 1971. And I'd love to have one of those Scott tuners with the Nixie frequency readout!

There are two sets of numbers stamped on the sticker on the bottom: a purple 719 in a circle, and a black 2302. - I guess if the 2302 is the correct number (it has 4 digits), then it was made in the 2nd week of 73.

It looks like according to that article this actually was the first electronic digital clock radio. If the C4390 was made in 71, it makes since that the C4390B might show up in 73. (Although they look the same. - maybe that 719 stands for 1971?)

Heathkit came out with an FM tuner featuring a Nixie-tube readout in the late 1960s-early seventies. It could be "tuned" with a ten-key (0-9) keypad on the front panel or by means of preprogrammed cards for each of the 300 FM radio channels (channel 201 was 88.1 MHz, going to channel 300, 107.9 MHz). The station's callsign could be written on the card corresponding to its frequency.

I don't know whether or not Heathkit got the idea from HH Scott; in fact, until I read this post, I did not realize the latter had a programmable FM tuner with a digital readout. My best guess, however, is the Heathkit tuner was modeled after the HH Scott design.