Sylvania 8894

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The 8894 is an early vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) tube manufactured in the united States by Sylvania and sold under the brand name “Flurotron”. Its most distinctive feature is the use of “floating” segments; unlike most other VFDs, where the segments are held on a continuous backplane. Another notable difference from later VFD designs is the absence of a control grid. Because of this, multiplexed driving is not possible, resulting in more complex drive circuitry.

The tube does not include a decimal point and therefore requires only nine pins (two for the cathode/heater and seven for the segments), allowing it to be mounted in a standard Noval socket. A closely related version, the 8843, adds a decimal point and uses a tenth pin located at the center which fit through the center hole most Noval sockets have.

Overall, the 8894 closely resembles Tung-Sol’s Digivac VFDs, such as the DT-1704B. These displays also omitted control grids and, at least in early versions, featured a similar floating-segment construction.

Key Specifications

Property	Description
Manufacturer	Sylvania
Time period	1970
Digit height	~14.5mm
Envelope diameter	~22mm
Envelope height	~50mm
Socket	Noval

References

Sylvania on Display Tubes

Sylvania 8894

Key Specifications

References