The birth of neon lights: Here’s all you need to know
What comes to your mind when you hear the term ‘neon’? Neon shoes, neon clothes, neon fish, neon signs and of course neon lights. The whole world of neon is so fascinating, isn’t it? Ever thought who came up with the idea of neon lights? Well, that’s quite a story.
Neon glow predates the birth of electricity
Before the dawn of electricity in the 18th and 19th century, a French astronomer named Jean Picard realised that his mercury barometer tube when shaken discharged a faint glow. He quickly named it as barometric light. However, what caused it (static electricity) remained widely unknown to him.
Electric discharge lamp, the forerunner of neon lights
What caused the barometric light remained a mystery but scientists over the years kept investigating. Meanwhile, electricity was discovered after centuries of efforts and entered the mainstream scenario.
Fast forward to 1855, a German glassblower and physicist named Heinrich Geissler invented something called a Geissler tube. Its purpose was simple—to find out more about the properties of the new-found wonder called electricity, alongside certain anonymous noble gases. With this in mind, one fine day, Geissler, during an experiment, placed the tube under low pressure and then applied an electrical voltage on top of it. Guess what happened? The tube started to glow.
Do you know what he named his second invention? Electric discharge lamp or vapour lamp. He defined it as “a lighting device consisting of a transparent container (Geissler tube) within which a gas is energised by an applied voltage, and thereby made to glow.” But what gas and why it glowed still remained unknown.
World welcomes the first ever neon light
In 1898, Londoners William Ramsey and M.W. Travers, both Chemistry research scholars at Oxbridge, discovered the neon gas (neon is derived from the Greek word ‘neos’ meaning new gas). Guess how they did it? They were experimenting with liquefaction of air and while separating the gases using the method of fractional distillation, they came upon a certain nameless gas. Unable to find a suitable name, they got stuck with ‘neon’. Soon, it was also revealed that this particular gas is very rare.
As you can imagine, the new-found gas became quite a rage in the science for its strange nature, and rightly so. It became part of several scientific experiments, until French engineer, chemist and inventor Georges Claude made a fascinating discovery in 1902.
He realised that when he exposed a sealed tube of neon gas to an electrical voltage, it glowed. It didn’t take long for him and others around the world to figure out that all this while, the glow in the barometric light or in electric discharge lamp was the result of the presence of neon gas in the atmosphere. Claude made use of his brand-new findings and gifted the world its first ever neon lamp (light) in 1910. He went on to patent it in 1915 in the USA and called it the ‘neon lighting tube.’
By the 1920s, both France and USA were filled with neon gas signs, while neon lighting gradually became a global sensation and stayed forever.