Perhaps, you all have already heard a lot about neon signs and its benefits for establishments, how it is made or how it functions, right? But do you know exactly who started it? Where and how it began? We are all enjoying the effects brought by these neon signs and we can never be too grateful for the one who invented it. It is probably just proper to know how it all began so that we could enjoy it even more than we do right now.
Neon signs were discovered by a French astronomer named Jean Picard way back in 1675. He was able to see a glow from a barometer tube filled with mercury even before electricity began. He was delighted with the light that these barometer tubes produced with just a shake or movement. Even if it was not fully understood yet, the investigation and discovery of various forms of lighting continued.
The inventor of the First ever neon lamp is Georges Claude, and his work was publicly announced and displayed last December 11, 1910. Together with his company called Claude Neon, they started selling neon signs in the United States by selling one of their works to Earle C. Anthony. He used the term “neos” to call his invention which means “the new gas”. But the neon gases that fill up the tubes were discovered by William Ramsey and M. W. Travers way back in 1898.
As for neon, what it is and where it comes from, well, actually, neon is one of the scarce or seldom found gases in the atmosphere (they are invisible to the naked eye of course). We can only use or have this through liquefaction and fractional distillation which is a complicated process and done only in laboratories.