In engineering circles, this circuit is better known as a 7447 BCD to seven-segment decoder/driver, but just using a single chip has little pedagogical value.

You can interface this type of display to a microcontroller using one or two output pins. The one-pin MCU interface employs a pulse-width-encoded output per segment.

[Fran] demonstrates the display running with a CD4511B BCD-to-7-segment decoder, hooked up with a bunch of 3904 power transistors to get the chip working with filament bulbs instead of LEDs.