Neon Lights the City of Light

Georges Claude displays his neon lamps to the public at the Paris Expo. Electric advertising is about to take a colorful turn, not to mention quite a few twists.

Claude, an engineer and chemist, started experimenting with neon as the filler gas for a tube around 1902. The red color of the light was distinctive. Claude was onto something.

After some more tinkering, Claude created two 38-foot-long neon-tube lamps to show to the public in 1910. They were pretty. But business turned out to be pretty slow … at first

By 1919, red-and-blue neon light graced the entrance of the Paris Opera House. The first city in the United States to get the neon treatment was Los Angeles Franchises for Claude Neon Lights, Inc., sprang up in other U.S. cities. Tokyo got its first neon signs in 1926. Neon advertising signs proliferated around the globe. The bright red light soon picked up the name “liquid fire,” and people started to refer to Georges Claude himself as “Claude Neon.” He was nearly 90 when he died in 1960, by which time Las Vegas had started its neon-aggrandized growth.