What is a Neon Sign?
Whether it has been in the window of your favorite bar or restaurant or in your buddy’s man-cave or garage, we have all seen a neon sign. It is an attention grabber and has been a signage staple for over 100 years.
The neon sign is an advancement of the earlier Geissler tube, which is a sealed glass tube that contains a "rarefied" gas. The electrical glow is created when voltage is applied to electrodes inserted through the glass. Geissler tubes were popular in the late 19th century and emitted a colorful glow created by the characteristics of the gases within the tubes. These early “Neon Signs” were unsuitable for general lighting because the color and light emission tended to decline over time with use. Over the years, there were many predecessors of neon tube lighting until the modern Neon Sign came to fruition in the early 1900’s with the development of fluorescent tube coatings.
Neon Signs from Sign Pro are crafted through the art of bending glass tubing into shapes. Sign Pro has designed and created thousands of custom neon signs and are employ skilled glass benders, neon bender and tube benders. The neon tube is made out of 4 or 5-foot long straight sticks of hollow glass and are manually assembled into individual custom designed and fabricated lamps coming in all sorts of shapes and sizes.
The interior of the tubes are typically coated with a thin phosphorescent powder coating which is then affixed to the interior wall of the tube by a binding material. The tube is then filled with a purified gas mixture which is then ionized by a high voltage applied between the ends of the sealed tube through cold cathodes welded onto the ends. Neon signs come in a variety of colors and the light emitted by the tube could be the result of the gas or the light from the phosphor layer. Different phosphor-coated tubing sections may be butt welded together using glass working torches to form a single tube of varying colors, for effects such as a sign where each letter displays a different color letter within a single word. Either way you look at it, the options are only limited by imagination.
Call the Neon Sign Professionals at Sign Pro to learn more. 979-774-0100