NEON

                   The father of so many inventions - Georges Claude who lived in Paris at the turn of the century was also known as the "Edison of France". About 1901 he found that a rare kind of gas - neon, could be obtained from the air.The problem was, in Claude's own words, "Once we had it, no one had any use for it". Claude and his assistants experimented. The most interesting quality of neon, they found, was that it glowed when as electrical charge was passed through it.

                    This fact gave Claude an idea for an entirely new way of producing light. He made neon tubes that could be used like ordinary light bulbs, but people did not take to the reddish light for household use. Then by bending the tubes with heat, Claude found a way to from letters. He realized that neon tubes could be used as advertising signs.

                   The neon sign was first used in the United States in 1923 to advertise a play called "Little Old New York". The sign attract more interest than the play and the boom in neon had began.