Liquid Fire

Georges Claude

January 19, 1915: Georges Claude files US Patent # 1,125,476. The patent was for a neon lamp. In 1675 Jean Picard, a French astronomer, first noticed a glow called barometric light after he shook a mercury-filled barometer. The glow came from static electricity. Heinrich Geissler, a German glassblower and physicist, developed a Geissler tube in 1855. The tube became important after electricity was applied. A variety of tubes containing various gases were tested. They were called electric discharge lamps – clear containers filled with gases that glowed after being electrified.

Claude used neon – a new gas (hence the name) discovered in 1898 by William Ramsey and M.W. Travers in London. Claude built his electric discharge lamp with the rare gas and first displayed the results in Paris in 1910. Neon is found in atmospheric air at the rate of 1 part per 65,000. It is obtained from liquefied air by separating the gas using a fractional distillation process. Today, there is a very limited supplier list for the rare gas used in many different business applications.

Claude, a native Parisian, formed a company, L’Air Liquide S.A., in order to obtain a variety of gases. The company still exists as a multinational air separation firm, but no longer produces neon. After displaying the neon lamp at the Paris Art Show in 1910, Claude created a method for bending the glass tubes in such a way as to form letters. He brought his idea to the US. Earle C. Anthony, a Packard car-dealership owner in Los Angeles, purchased two signs from Claude in 1923.

The Packard signs were the first neon signs in the US. People stopped and stared at what they called “liquid fire.” The first neon sign in the world was placed in a Paris barbershop eleven years before the signs came to America. Las Vegas, Nevada – a city famous for The Strip lighted with neon signs – got their first one in 1929 when the Oasis Café lit up. Today, there are at least five locations in Las Vegas dedicated to the old signs with displays at various Neon Museums.

Miami Beach is where neon goes to die. – Lenny Bruce

One night in the early sixties I passed something on the Long Island Expressway just before the Queens tunnel that I must have seen for years. The billboard advertising cigars, Dutch Masters. I realized it was sort of perfect. It’s weird isn’t it? You’re looking at Rembrandt – in neon! It was too much, it was irresistible. – Larry Rivers

We won’t be taken for a ride, … We don’t have neon signs on top of our heads reading “stupid.” – Saeb Erekat

Those old streetscapes didn’t present a tidy appearance – it was a real syncopation of signs and storefronts with neon and flashing lights – and I think the planners of the ’60s looked down on that kind of environment. – Tim Samuelson

Also on this day:

Electrifying – In 1883, Roselle, New Jersey became the first electrified community.
LISA – In 1983, Apple introduced a new computer.
Not Commando – In 1935, Marshall Field and Company first sold Samuel T. Cooper’s new product – the Jockey brief.

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