Ancestry of Neon: Panel Reflector Signs

Before neon signs began to proliferate in New York during the 1920s, another type of electric sign predominated throughout the city.  These were the so-called "panel reflector" signs.  The concept behind them was extremely simple: they were comprised only of a painted signboard, illuminated by incandescent bulbs housed in a hooded fixture mounted to the top of the sign.
  

Early advertisements for panel reflector signs by the C.H. Lush Sign Works and the Salzinger Sign Co., from Signs of the Times Magazine.  (ST Media Group, used with permission)

Panel reflector signs are almost ubiquitous in early twentieth century street scenes of New York.  New York Edison's 1927 Electric Sign Survey found nearly 6,000 of them in Manhattan below 135th Street, making them the most common electric sign typology in the city that year.  They advertised all sorts of businesses, from independent shops and stores to chain businesses, like Nedick's. 

Panel reflector signs around New York in the 1930s.  From top: Nedick's, at 6th Avenue and West 8th Street in Greenwich Village (NYU); Bernarr McFadden's One Cent Cafeteria, on Bleecker near Mercer; the Famous Coffee Shop, on 125th Street near Madison Avenue; the Sidney Garage at 69th and West End (NYPL).

Today, however, they are very scarce indeed.  Of traditional examples, I can cite just three in Manhattan.  The St. Paul's House ministry on West 51st Street in Manhattan is known for its glorious neon cross, but its ancient panel reflector sign goes overlooked. 

  
St. Paul's House Ministries, at 335 West 51st Street in Hell's Kitchen. (T. Rinaldi)

Heading downtown, another classic panel reflector can be found at the Madison Avenue Baptist Church, on East 30th Street just off Madison.  This very handsome sign is one of my favorites of any variety in New York, with great blackletter and script lettering, and stainless steel and porcelain enameled sheet metal. Its style and materials relate to the neon signs that largely replaced panel reflectors by the Second World War.

The Madison Avenue Baptist Church, at 30 East 31st Street.  (T. Rinaldi)

Still further downtown, another fine panel reflector sign hangs over the door of the venerable Pete's Tavern, which traces its opening back to 1864.  This sign has been updated somewhat, with fluorescent rather than incandescent lighting and what appear to be cut plywood letters. In its basic form, though, this example retains the classic characteristics of an electric sign typology that once characterized the New York streetscape, now nearly extinct.  

Pete's Ancient Tavern, at 18th and Irving.  (T. Rinaldi)

Light a Neon Candle

The murky origins of neon signs make it perennially difficult to pick any single anniversary to celebrate as their true date of birth.  One date, however, is hard and fast: on June 12, 1898, the British scientists Sir William Ramsay and Morris William Travers discovered the gas they named neon.

"Of the five elements with four-letter names, it's the only one that's not solid at room temperature." (Jeopardy)  

The details of the discovery are well recorded thanks to numerous published works, including several books authored by Travers later in his life.  "The blaze of crimson light from the tube told its own story, and it was a sight to dwell upon and never to forget," he remembered in The Discovery of the Rare Gases, published in 1928: "nothing in the world gave a glow such as we had seen."

Sir William Ramsay's discovery of neon and the other noble gases helped earn him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1904.  It was Ramsay's adolescent son Willie whose suggestion led the gas to be called "neon" in 1898. (NobelPrize.org)

At risk of some reckless oversimplification, I will attempt to reduce the science to layman's terms.  Ramsay and Travers spent years isolating the various gases that exist in the earth's atmosphere – in other words, breaking the air we breathe down into its component parts.  To do this, they cooled air to an extremely low temperature, turning it to liquid.  As the liquid air then warmed, its component elements returned to a gaseous state in sequence, making it possible to collect small samples of them individually.  In addition to neon, this basic principle enabled Ramsay to discover argon, krypton and xenon.  Neon's luminous properties became apparent almost immediately: as a matter of course, Ramsay and Travers passed an electric current through a glass-enclosed sample of the gas, an analysis of the resultant glow helping to determine whether they indeed had found a new gas.

 
Morris William Travers, aka "Rare Gas Travers", was in his twenties when he and William Ramsay discovered neon. (Science Photo Library)

All of this happened in the last years of the long reign of Queen Victoria: odd as it may seem, neon is a bona fide product of the Victorian era.  By at least one account, Ramsay and Travers used neon together with several other gases to make an illuminated sign in tribute to Victoria in 1898.  (My efforts to find primary documentation of this sign have thus far come to naught.) 

Sample colors in the New York shop of Let There Be Neon.  After its discovery, neon took on something of a life of its own.  Many if not most luminous tubes used for "neon signs" actually contain argon, not neon.  (T. Rinaldi)

Another decade would pass before other developments facilitated the commercial viability of neon illumination.  For all the controversy that would haunt the evolution of neon signs in the years that followed, credit for neon's place on the periodic table remains securely with Ramsay and Travers.

 
East 138th Street in the Bronx.  (T. Rinaldi)

Ancestry of Neon: The Moore Tube Light

There ought to be a monument to the man who invented neon lights. Fifteen stories high, solid marble. There’s a boy who really made something out of nothing.

                                                                                   Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister, 1949

For most of the 20th century, historians have credited the neon sign to the French inventor Georges Claude.  In my own research, however, I came to see this as a gross over-simplification.  Daniel McFarlan Moore (1869-1936), an American inventor who essentially developed the concept of the neon sign as we know it, has been almost completely forgotten by history.  

The Prime of Daniel McFarlan Moore.  (New York Times, Feb. 5, 1896)

To ask "who invented the neon sign" is to pose a trick question.  Neon gas exists in the air we breathe: it was discovered, not invented.  Probably half of all so-called neon signs don't use neon at all (argon is typically used for colors other than red).  Neon and argon lights meanwhile are both varieties of "luminous tube" lamps, which likewise have no preeminent inventor.   

 

ABOVE: Illustration showing one of Moore's first tube signs.  (Scientific American, Feb. 2, 1896)

ABOVE: The "Moore Chapel," a small chapel mock-up illuminated by Moore tubes, was a main attraction at the Electrical Exhibition of 1898, held at Madison Square Garden.  Over the door, a Moore Tube sign welcomed visitors to the "Moore Vacuum Tube Chapel".  (Electrical Engineer, May 12, 1898)

Around the year 1895, Moore began making electric signs using luminous tubes bent into the form of letters or shapes.   Previously employed by Thomas Edison, Moore set up shop on his own in the early 1890s to develop a new kind of electric lamp that he thought would improve upon Edison's incandescent bulb, which Moore called "too small, too hot, and too red".  To do this, Moore looked to an alternate technology known as gas discharge illumination.  

 

ABOVE: Before-and-after rendering showing Moore tubes installed over a fashionable entryway. (Cassier's Magazine, September 1894)

ABOVE: Moore tubes at an entrance canopy on Fifth Avenue in New York.  (The Technical World, May 1905)

A gas discharge lamp is a sealed glass tube with electrodes at each end; the tube is filled with a gas that glows as it conducts electricity across the gap between the electrodes.   Experiments based on this idea date back to the 17th century.   The German physicist Heinrich Geissler made headway with gas discharge lamps in the 1850s, but Moore took the concept further in the 1890s, producing luminous tubes that were sold commercially for conventional lighting and for electric signs.  Neon gas had yet to be discovered, so Moore used carbon dioxide instead. 

 

ABOVE:  Moore tubes installed in the main entrance lobby at Madison Square Garden in New York, c. 1905. (Artificial Light: Its Influence upon Civilization, by Matthew Luckiesh, 1920)

Moore's idea turned out to be fatally ahead of its time.  He unveiled his tube lamp in 1896, just two years before the discovery of neon gas.  To keep them lit, Moore had to fit the tubes with a pump that replenished the gas inside.  Over the next decade, Moore struggled to make his lamp a viable competitor of the incandescent bulb.  Neon remained scarce and very expensive, so Moore experimented with other gases, such as helium and nitrogen.  Moore's goal was to make a lamp for general illumination: he would have seen neon's characteristic red glow as a significant handicap.

ABOVE: Plan drawing showing Moore tube installation at Bamberger's Department Store, Newark.  (Electrical Review, Aug. 18, 1906)

Georges Claude meanwhile literally found himself with neon gas he didn't know what to do with.  Claude's company, Air Liquide, supplied specialty gases for industrial use.  In seeking a commercial use for neon, Claude eventually decided to make an improved Moore tube using neon gas.  He sought to patent the idea in France in 1910, and in the United States the following year.  Neon's orange-red glow may not have been suited for general illumination, but, as Claude discovered, it fit the bill for electric signs.

 

ABOVE: Rendering of a proposed Moore tube installation for a church.  (Cassier's Magazine, September 1894) 

 

ABOVE: Interior of the Moore Chapel at the Electrical Exhibition of 1898.  (Electrical Engineer, May 12, 1898) 

At around the same time, the introduction of tungsten filaments suddenly improved the efficiency of incandescent bulbs, thus dampening the impetus for Moore's improved electric lamp.  Sufficiently discouraged, Moore reconciled with Edison in 1912:  he sold his patents to General Electric and took a position with the company's research labs, where his later work included pioneering developments toward the advent of television. 

ABOVE: Moore proposed tube lighting for streetcar interiors and for outdoor street lighting in New York. (Boston Daily Globe, August 1, 1897)

On the evening of June 14, 1936, Moore received a visit at his home in East Orange, New Jersey from a certain Jean Philip Gebhardt, a spurned inventor who apparently felt Moore had stolen one of his ideas.  "Oh, that's that nut from Brooklyn," Moore remarked, and went to bed.   Gebhardt returned the next morning and fatally shot Moore twice in the head (Gebhardt committed suicide two days later).  GE introduced the modern fluorescent lamp – a descendant of the Moore tube – in 1938.

 

ABOVE: Moore tubes to light "the drawing room of the future." (Cassier's Magazine, September, 1894)

ABOVE: "The drawing room of the future," perhaps not exactly what Moore had in mind - Club Babylon, Tony Montana's hangout in the 1983 film Scarface.  

Images of Moore tube signs are exceedingly difficult to find today, and not one physical example seems to have survived anywhere.  Signs were an afterthought for Moore's purposes, and he concentrated on conventional applications such as indoor and street lighting. 

 
ABOVE: Rendering for a Moore tube sconce.  (Cassier's Magazine, September 1894)

But the Moore tube's most successful application seems to have been for electric signs.  "I had the impression that it was good only for illuminated signs and relatively unimportant work," remarked electrical engineer Gano Dunn of the Moore Tube in 1907.  One later account recalls that Broadway was "flanked with a double row of this new type of electrical advertising" in the early 1900s. The credit for making luminous tube signs the 20th century icons they became goes to Claude, but it was Moore who developed the concept and first made it a commercial reality.

Please contact me if you know of any Moore signs that still exist, or any images of them.

FOR MORE, SEE:
• More about Moore at the Smithsonian.
• "The Moore Electric Light," in The Technical World, May 1905 (via Google Books)
• "The Light of the Future," in Cassier's Magazine, September 1894. (via Google Books)
• Complete bibliography for this story at this link.

IN OTHER NEON NEWS: 
• The great NYPD sign in Times Square has multiplied.
• I will give a brief lecture on neon sign conservation for the Association for Preservation Technology / Northeast Chapter's Historic Lighting symposium at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT on Friday, Feb. 3, 2012. Please join if you're in the neighborhood.
• New addition to the database at nyneon.org: an unknown travel bureau sign on Austin St. in Forest Hills, Queens (for real this time).

Neon At One-Hundred

This Wednesday, November 9, 2011, will mark exactly one hundred years since Georges Claude filed his "System of Illuminating by Luminescent Tubes" at the U.S. Patent Office.  This event arguably marked the birth of neon illumination in the United States (Claude filed the same patent in his native France in November 1910).  "Arguable" is the operative word here:  despite their immense impact on the built landscape, the origins of neon signs are murky at best. 

Georges Claude's claim as the originator of neon signs in the United States rested on Patent No. 1,125,476, filed November 9, 1911. (freepatentsonline.com; click here to see the whole patent)

 

The U.S. Patent Office had multiple reservations about Claude's application, and did not issue his patent until January 19, 1915, more than three years later.  By his own account, Claude did not exhibit his neon lights in the U.S. until 1913.  Claude's signs appeared in Paris before World War I, but his first American sale did not come until 1923.  His U.S. patents were besieged by law suits all through the 1920s: various inventors claimed to have created neon signs in the U.S. as early as 1909, and Claude's system was predicated on developments by the American inventor D. McFarlan Moore.

"Outshines the Sunshine." (From Claude Neon advertisements in New York Times, 1927-28)

But this is hardly the occasion to dwell on doubts over Claude's status as the "inventor" of neon signs, or other silly details, like his collaboration with the Nazis during the Second World War, and subsequent imprisonment (we'll get into that another day).  On this anniversary, I thought it would be nice to tally up some of Claude's signs that still survive in New York, or that survived until recently.  

In a 1927 advertisement, Claude Neon Lights of New York claimed to have produced 611 of 750 neon installations that then existed in New York.  Claude fabricated some signs at its own plant, which was located in Long Island City, and some in collaboration with other sign shops that operated as Claude-licensed affiliates; non-licensed shops were invariably sued by Claude.   The most prominent Claude licensee in New York was Strauss & Co., predecessor of the famous Artkraft Strauss Sign Corp.  A number of early neon signs by Strauss / Artkraft Strauss survive and can be partly attributed to Claude.  Strauss had a contract to do signs for all Loew's movie theaters in the New York area, and a few Loew's signs from this period survive in the city.  Only one of these – the sign at the Loew's Paradise Theatre in the Bronx, possibly New York’s oldest neon sign – remains functional.

Fascia sign of the Loew's Paradise Theatre in the Bronx, likely the work of Claude Neon / Strauss & Co. Installed in 1929, this is possibly the oldest surviving neon sign in New York today.  (T.Rinaldi)

 

Until relatively recently, one Claude sign (at least I think it was made by Claude) hung over a former Longchamp's restaurant on Madison Avenue and 49th Street.  I couldn't quite make out the lettering on the tiny plaque at the bottom of the sign, but it looked like it said "Claude Neon", and this helpful tidbit from the internet seems to back that up.  The sign disappeared in 2006, taking its little manufacturer's tag with it.

This great relic sign vanished in 2006. (T.Rinaldi)

At least two other Claude signs remain in New York: the long-dark roof sign over Tudor City on East 42nd Street, which Claude erected in 1939 (more on this in another post), and the great neon clock at the former Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower in Brooklyn, installed in 1929.  In Claude Neon's house organ, the Claude Neon News, the company described this latter installation as "the largest four-faced illuminated clock in the world," with hour- and minute-hands 12- and 17-feet long, respectively, and a total diameter of 27 feet.  The Loew's Paradise not withstanding, this is probably the last functioning Claude display in the five boroughs today (when it functions, that is).  

Two surviving works by Claude Neon Lights of New York: the long dark roof sign over Tudor City on East 42nd Street (top) and the great four-faced clock of the former Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower in Brooklyn. (T.Rinaldi)

If Claude may not have truly invented the neon sign, he unquestionably deserves credit for making neon illumination a commercially viable industry, one that made an indelible mark on the built landscape of the 20th century.  Yet his dominance of the neon business was short-lived: in the 1930s, Claude's critical patent expired.  In New York, smaller sign shops soon wrested the lion's share of the neon trade from Claude. One such shop, the Serota Sign Corp., purchased Claude's New York operation in the midst of the Second World War.  Claude himself died in 1960, aged 89, his record as an inventor still overshadowed by his collaboration with the Nazis during the War.  But traces of his work survive.  In addition to the signs pictured here, there are a handful of old Claude Neon franchises around the world that actually still retain the Claude name in 2011.  And Claude Neon's parent company, the French industrial gas supplier Air Liquide, is still alive and well, Fortune 500-listed nearly 110 years after Georges Claude co-founded it in 1902.

IN OTHER NEON NEWS:

• Word (by way of Jeremiah's Vanishing New York) on salvation for the Coney Island Bialy Bakery, and for its great neon sign, made by the Salzman Sign Co. c. 1959. 

REFERENCES:

• "Claude Neon Lights, Inc" (Advertisement). New York Times, Oct. 18, 1927.
• The Claude Neon News, Aug. 1929., p. 2.
• "Fluorescent Coloring." Signs of the Times, June 1939.
• Morris, Mel. The Neon Patent Situation. Houston: Mel Morris Neon Laboratories, 1930.