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Georges Claude was a French engineer, chemist and inventor. Claude is credited as the first person who made a neon lamp as far back as 1902. The first neon lamp was displayed to the public in 1910. Claude took his invention to America in 1923, and sold the first neon sign to a Los Angeles car dealership. The Packard car dealership bought two signs reading Packard for an astounding 24,000 dollars. That was a fortune back then and still is. Today you can buy a neon game room sign for as little as $150 depending on the size and complexity of design.
The advertising power of neon lamps were soon realized by other businesses. People stopped to stare at the first Packard signs and called it 'liquid fire'. This was just 40 years after Edison created the first commercially viable electric light bulb. It was just 20 years after the discovery of Neon gas which was discovered by William Ramsey and M.W. Travers in 1898 in London. They will be amazed today by the quality in design and range of colors in a contemporary neon game room sign.
Ramsey chilled a sample of the atmosphere until it was liquefied; he then heated it up and caught the gasses as they boiled off. The three gasses he caught were krypton, xenon and neon. The process he used has been refined and is now known as cryogenic fractional distillation. Without this process the applications of neon would be impossible, like making a neon game room sign for instance.
Neon is a rare gaseous element on Earth. It makes up 1 part in 65,000 parts of the air we breathe. However, it is the fifth most abundant gaseous element in the universe. To procure pure neon you must liquefy air and then extract the neon through a process called fractional distillation. Neon in its neutral state is non toxic and it is stable, it will not explode, making it perfect for a sign that might be bumped, like a neon game room sign. You must be careful around a lit sign, if you touch the glass surface with a metal object, you may suffer an electric shock.
Not all neon signs contain neon. Neon is the generic term applied to all lamps that give off bright colors. The manufacturing process involves coating the inside of glass tubes with phosphor. When argon gas is used, mercury must be injected into the tube to allow the argon gas to combust when an electrical current is introduced. Thanks to the phosphor coating process, it is currently possible to produce neon lights with 150 different colors. This means you can order a neon game room sign with a different color for each letter of the phrase.
When mercury is used, it can actually be observed in cold weather conditions. Due to the mercury contracting in cold weather, you will be able to see dimly lit spots in an argon lamp. This is where there is a low concentration of mercury. This effect however will rectify itself when the weather gets hotter. So you don't have to worry about leaving your neon game room sign out on a cold day.
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