The device was invented by John Reginald Acton, with the patent assigned to Ericsson.

Internal designs vary by the model and manufacturer, but generally, a dekatron has ten cathodes and one or two guide electrodes plus a common anode.

Selectors allow for monitoring the status of each cathode or to divide-by-n with the proper reset circuitry.

This kind of versatility made such dekatrons useful for numerical division in early calculators.

While most dekatrons are decimal counters, models were also made to count in base-5 and base-12 for specific applications.