thumb|A neon light art installation in [[Bangkok]]

thumb|right|[[Piccadilly Circus, London in 1962. The first neon sign, for Bovril, was installed here in 1923.]]

thumb |right |The vicinity of [[Times Square, New York City has displayed neon signs since 1924. |alt=Photograph of a crowded city street at night. The street is in a commercial district; the buildings all have at least several stories, and some are high rise. The buildings have elaborate signs, many of which incorporate neon lighting. There are prominent signs for Madame Tussaud's, Loew's, Empire, AMC 25 Theatre, and Modell's.]]

Neon lighting consists of brightly glowing, electrified glass tubes or bulbs that contain rarefied neon or other gases. Neon lights are a type of cold cathode gas-discharge light. A neon tube is a sealed glass tube with a metal electrode at each end, filled with one of a number of gases at low pressure. A high potential of several thousand volts applied to the electrodes ionizes the gas in the tube, causing it to emit colored light. The color of the light depends on the gas in the tube. Neon lights were named for neon, a noble gas which gives off a popular orange light, but other gases and chemicals called phosphors are used to produce other colors, such as hydrogen (purple-red), helium (yellow or pink), carbon dioxide (white), and mercury (blue). Neon tubes can be fabricated in curving artistic shapes, to form letters or pictures. They are mainly used to make dramatic, multicolored glowing signage for advertising, called neon signs, which were popular from the 1920s to 1960s and again in the 1980s.

The term can also refer to the miniature neon glow lamp, developed in 1917, about seven years after neon tube lighting.

Neon was discovered in 1898 by the British scientists William Ramsay and Morris W. Travers. After obtaining pure neon from the atmosphere, they explored its properties using an "electrical gas-discharge" tube that was similar to the tubes used for neon signs today. Georges Claude, a French engineer and inventor, presented neon tube lighting in essentially its modern form at the Paris Motor Show, December 3–18, 1910. Claude, sometimes called "the Edison of France", had a near monopoly on the new technology, which became very popular for signage and displays in the period 1920–1940. Neon lighting was an important cultural phenomenon in the United States in that era; by 1940, the downtowns of nearly every city in the US were bright with neon signage, and Times Square in New York City was known worldwide for its neon extravagances. There were 2,000 shops nationwide designing and fabricating neon signs. The popularity, intricacy, and scale of neon signage for advertising declined in the U.S. following the Second World War (1939–1945), but development continued vigorously in Japan, Iran, and some other countries.

Neon lighting is closely related to fluorescent lighting, which developed about 25 years after neon tube lighting. The procedure of examining the colors of the light emitted from gas-discharge (or "Geissler" tubes) was well known at the time, since the colors of light (the "spectral lines") emitted by a gas discharge tube are, effectively, fingerprints that identify the gases inside.

Immediately following neon's discovery, neon tubes were used as scientific instruments and novelties. However, the scarcity of purified neon gas precluded its prompt application for electrical gas-discharge lighting along the lines of Moore tubes, which used more common nitrogen or carbon dioxide as the working gas, and enjoyed some commercial success in the US in the early 1900s. After 1902, Georges Claude's company in France, Air Liquide, began producing industrial quantities of neon as a byproduct of the air liquefaction business. From December 3 to 18, 1910, Claude demonstrated two large ( long), bright red neon tubes at the Paris Motor Show. |alt=Photograph of a large painted sign in the form of a cowboy. The cowboy is winking his eye. His left hand is lifted, and he's pointing that thumb towards the building to his right. A lighted cigarette dangles from the corner of his mouth. He's wearing a cowboy hat, boots, and a scarf. Glowing neon tubes highlight the outlines.]]

thumb|Display of neon lighting samples in a glass studio

These neon tubes were essentially in their contemporary form. The outer diameters for the glass tubing used in neon lighting ranges from 9 to 25 mm; with standard electrical equipment, the tubes can be as long as . The pressure of the gas inside ranges from 3 to 20 Torr (0.4–3 kPa), which corresponds to a partial vacuum in the tubing. Claude had also solved two technical problems that substantially shortened the working life of neon and some other gas discharge tubes, and effectively gave birth to a neon lighting industry. In 1915, a US patent was issued to Claude covering the design of the electrodes for gas-discharge lighting; this patent became the basis for the monopoly held in the US by his company, Claude Neon Lights, for neon signs through the early 1930s.

Claude's patents envisioned the use of gases such as argon and mercury vapor to create different colors beyond those produced by neon. For instance, mixing metallic mercury with neon gas creates blue. Green can then be achieved using uranium (yellow) glass. White and gold can also be created by adding argon and helium. In the 1920s, fluorescent glasses and coatings were developed to further expand the range of colors and effects for tubes with argon gas or argon-neon mixtures; generally, the fluorescent coatings are used with an argon/mercury-vapor mixture, which emits ultraviolet light that activates the fluorescent coatings. A Smithsonian Institution website notes, "These small, low power devices use a physical principle called 'coronal discharge'." Moore mounted two electrodes close together in a bulb and added neon or argon gas. The electrodes would glow brightly in red or blue, depending on the gas, and the lamps lasted for years. Since the electrodes could take almost any shape imaginable, a popular application has been fanciful decorative lamps. Glow lamps found practical use as electronic components, and as indicators in instrument panels and in many home appliances until the acceptance of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) starting in the 1970s."

Overall, however, neon displays became less fashionable, and some cities discouraged their construction with ordinances. Nelson Algren titled his 1947 collection of short stories The Neon Wilderness (as a synonym of "urban jungle" for Chicago). Margalit Fox has written, "... after World War II, as neon signs were replaced increasingly by fluorescent-lighted plastic, the art of bending colored tubes into sinuous, gas-filled forms began to wane." A Dark Age persisted at least through the 1970s, when artists adopted neon with enthusiasm; in 1979 Rudi Stern published his manifesto, Let There Be Neon. Marcus Thielen wrote in 2005, on the 90th anniversary of the US patent issued to Georges Claude, "The demand for the use of neon and cold cathode in architectural applications is growing, and the introduction of new techniques like fiber optics and LED—into the sign market have strengthened, rather than replaced, neon technology. The evolution of the 'waste' product neon tube remains incomplete 90 years after the patent was filed.<!--Sic; the patent was filed for in 1913.-->" hence the distinguishing term cold-cathode lighting.

Some of the applications of neon lamps include: Plasma displays emit ultraviolet light, with each pixel containing phosphors for red, green, or blue light.

Neon lighting and artists in light

<!--A "neon art" or "artists in light" article doesn't appear to exist on Wikipedia; ideally, this would be referred to here.-->

thumb|The Blessing Hand, 2013, neon installation by [[Stepan Ryabchenko at the exhibition Premonition: Ukrainian Art Now in Saatchi Gallery in London.]]

thumb|The Future Isn't What It Used to Be, 2015, neon artwork by Hubert Czerepok. The letters form a shape of [[Poland.]]

The mid to late 1980s was a period of resurgence in neon production. Sign companies developed a new type of signage called channel lettering, in which individual letters were fashioned from sheet metal.

While the market for neon lighting in outdoor advertising signage has declined since the mid twentieth century, in recent decades neon lighting has been used consciously in art, both in individual objects and integrated into architecture. Frank Popper traces the use of neon lighting as the principal element in artworks to Gyula Košice's late 1940s work in Argentina. Among the later artists whom Popper notes in a brief history of neon lighting in art are Stephen Antonakos, the conceptual artists Billy Apple, Joseph Kosuth, Bruce Nauman, Martial Raysse, Chryssa, Piotr Kowalski, Maurizio Nannucci and François Morellet

List of neon light artists

  • Billy Apple (1935) New Zealand / USA
  • Frida Blumenberg (1935) South Africa
  • Chryssa (1933) Greek-American
  • Cerith Wyn Evans (1958) Wales
  • Michael Flechtner (1951) US
  • Michael Hayden (1943) Canada
  • Joseph Kosuth (1965) US
  • Piotr Kowalski (1927) Poland, France
  • Brigitte Kowanz (1957) Austria
  • Lili Lakich (1944) US
  • Mario Merz (1925) Italy
  • Victor Millonzi (1915) US
  • Maurizio Nannucci (1939) Italy
  • Bruce Nauman (1941) US
  • Bill Parker (1950) US - plasma lamp
  • Stepan Ryabchenko (1987) Ukraine
  • Lisa Schulte (1956) US
  • Keith Sonnier (1941) US
  • Rudi Stern (1936) US
  • Tim White-Sobieski (1961) Poland

See also

References

Further reading

  • Len Davidson operated a neon museum in Philadelphia until 2006; the museum exhibited pieces from his large private collection. See