Before the weekend (and mine, sadly, will be full of grading), I'm going to throw something out for the collective wisdom of the Internet.

This is something that has bugged me, intermittently, when I think of it, and I'd love to have a name for the item so I could look it up and learn how it works.

When I was a kid, friends of ours had this little lamp. It stayed lit all the time; it had a sort of pale orange glow, almost like a sodium vapour lamp. Only it had small figures in it...it seems to me that one of the figures was the one that glowed. I remember asking the woman who owned it if it burned out fast (like light bulbs). She said no, that it lasted for five or more years (after which, I presume, you got a new one).

I don't THINK it was a Nixie Tube sort of thing -though the color was somewhat similar. (And I remember the lamp as containing a little woodland scene with ferns and such, but that may be my imagination re-creating the thing inaccurately.

Does ANYONE else remember these? Early to mid 70s, little tiny (maybe 6" high) things that were kind of like a bell jar with a little scene in them that glowed a soft salmon-orange? I'm sure there were more of them around than the one my friends had. What were they called? How were they made? They may have been a tiny sort of neon lamp (but with another gas in them to get that particular color).

I'd really like to know. It's one of those things I can kind of picture in my mind and it bugs me that I don't know more about it.