Besides hosting cultural icons and skyscrapers, downtown Los Angeles boasts a special little museum: MoNA, or the Museum of Neon Art. How can a gas, noble though it may be, rate not just one museum, but two? (There’s another one in -- where else? -- Las Vegas.)
Well, for good or ill, neon has become part of pop culture, making Sin City so bright by night that it can cause light pollution in Death Valley, more than 100 miles away. All of this is thanks to the genius of French engineer Georges Claude.
On January 19, 1915, Claude passed an electric current through a tube of neon gas to make it glow, thereby inventing the neon lamp. Only seventeen years after neon was discovered in London in 1898, Claude had found a commercial use for it, and patented his invention for use in advertising.
One of the first business to purchase a neon sign -- actually two, for $24,000 (over $370,000 in modern currency) -- was a Packard car dealership in Los Angeles. Across America, neon signs soon multiplied, achieving their ultimate form in New York's Times Square. Advertisements for cigarettes, beer, movies-- and even Internet companies -- have been illuminating Times Square for nearly a century. The Camel sign designed by Artkraft Strauss alone puffed smoke on New Yorkers from 1941 to 1966.
Artkraft Strauss dominated Times Square neon signage for decades, until neon was replaced by digital devices like LEDs, that use up to 90% less energy. Since November, the digital 17-story exterior of the new Walgreens has been shining at One Times Square: 250,000 pounds, 341 feet high, 143 feet wide, with 12 million light-emitting diodes on 17,000 square feet -- that’s what it takes to surpass the former behemoth, the puny-by-comparison 11,000-square-foot NASDAQ sign at Broadway and 43rd Street, and cements Times Square's status as the largest outdoor advertising space in the world.
Suggested Sites...
- Georges Claude and Neon Lights - how a French engineer got the brilliant idea to make lamps using neon, and sold them as glowing ads to the world.
- Artkraft Strauss - tons of images from the most famous designer and creator of Times Square's iconic signs and displays in the 20th century (check the archive section).
- A Vibrant Tour of America's Neon Signs - John Barnes discusses his book about great neon signs.
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