Who invented the neon lamp. What is a neon lamp? Operating principle, design and characteristics Who invented neon lamps

Neon lamps

The first mention of attempts to make a gas glow through electricity dates back to the beginning of the 18th century, when the scientist Francis Hawksby, better known as a researcher of the capillary effect in liquids, together with another physicist, Johan G. Finkler, conducted similar experiments using static electricity. However, these were nothing more than experiments, because the beginning of the true era of electricity was still far away.

On the other side of the Atlantic, in the Old World, the Scottish chemist William Ramsay (Ramsay), together with Morris William Traver, discovered NEON (N6) - an inert gas contained in microscopic quantities in the air. This was the third inert gas discovered by scientists after argon and helium. Ramsay talks about the choice of name for this element:
“When we first looked at its spectrum, my 12-year-old son was there.
“Father,” he said, “what is the name of this beautiful gas?”
“It hasn’t been decided yet,” I replied.
- He's new? - the son was curious.
“Newly discovered,” I objected.
- Why not call him Novum, father?
- This is not suitable because novum is not Greek word, I answered.
- We'll call it neon, which means new in Greek.
This is how the gas got its name."
A few years later, Ramsay discovered two more noble gases - krypton and xenon, and in 1904 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "in recognition of his discovery of various noble gases in the atmosphere and the determination of their place in the periodic table." However, Ramsay was a serious scientist, very far from the gas-light business and, in general, the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe commercial use of inert gases. Moreover, the cost of their production was too high at that time.
So, so far, two events - the discovery of the scientist Ramsay and the invention of the General Electric employee Moore - were connected only by a date. They happened in the same year, 1898. Could this end their connection forever? Maybe. But here, in the gas-light business, as in many areas of technology of that time, French engineering shone.
Initially, Parisian Georges Claude did not even think about neon, much less about advertising. He was born on September 24, 1870, and began his experiments on gases at the very end of the 19th century, working as an engineer at the Paris School of Physics and Chemistry. Georges wanted to achieve a cheap method of producing high quality oxygen. It was for this project that on May 6, 1899, Claude, together with his student friend Paul Delorme, opened a company with a capital of 7,500 francs.

Claude was going to sell oxygen to hospitals and gas welders, which promised considerable profits at that time. However, the gas did not want to be released in its pure form. It invariably appeared with "waste" - inert gases. At that time, their properties had already been described, and Claude understood that the admixtures of inert gases did not in any way interfere with the purposes for which he received oxygen. But he, as a talented engineer, was interested in the question of their use, especially since he was quite capable of obtaining neon and argon using similar technology. Remembering the overseas luminous tubes, he began - so far only for the sake of experiment - to fill sealed glass vessels with inert gases under low pressure. The tubes filled with neon glowed with a bright red light under the influence of electrical discharges! Argon gave a blue glow.
The enterprising Frenchman immediately appreciated the potential of the result. The oxygen business was abandoned. Now Claude's engineering thought began to work in a different direction. he decided to attract public attention to neon light and exhibited it. In 1910 Grand Palais is not yet an advertising, but an artistic composition using neon tubes. Seeing the “unearthly light”, Claude’s acquaintance Jacques Fonsecu suggested using noble gases for outdoor advertising. A year later, a patent for neon advertising appeared, and with it the company Claude Neon Lights, Inc.
In 1912, Claude's enterprising assistant sold the first advertising sign for a small hairdressing salon on Montmartre Boulevard. A year later, a Cinzano neon sign about a meter high was installed on the roof of one of the Parisian houses. Claude, meanwhile, diligently improved neon tubes. Their “weak” point was the electrodes. In 1915, he patented his most successful invention - electrodes with a high degree of corrosion resistance. Thanks to this innovation, the design of the lamp was significantly simplified. By the way, Claude dreamed of decorating houses with his lamps both outside and inside. During the First World War, his business slowed down, but in the early 1920s. The world is overtaken by an advertising boom. The neon signs arrived just in time. In 1919, the Paris Opera was illuminated in red and blue. The first advertisement appears in the United States in the same color combination. In 1923, a representative of the Packard brand in America bought two signs for $1,250 each to advertise cars.
As a result of the fact that Georges Claude began to sell licenses for the production of neon advertising outside France, by the end of 1924 they were sold out all over the world, but most of all in the USA. Neon soon appeared in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Boston, etc. America, which made a splash at the end of the 19th century. "Moore tubes", in the twentieth century gradually regained the title of the world center of neon production. In the 20s the phrase "Neon Claude" was so persistent that many Americans were sure that "Neon" was the name of the inventor. Illuminated signs became increasingly popular, and transporting fragile glass tubes from city to city was difficult and unprofitable. Therefore, countless unlicensed small factories for the production of neon signs began to appear in US cities. Moreover, Georges Claude's patents expired by the early 1930s, and the manufacturers of neon masterpieces were inspired. Real competition emerged, which helped neon expand the technical capabilities of advertising signs. Brand logos began to be developed, and advertising began to take on the character of art. Finally there are other colors besides red and blue. This was achieved by applying phosphor powder to the inner walls of the tubes, which, under the influence of ultraviolet radiation, especially intensely emitted by mercury vapor mixed with argon, has one or another light shade depending on its composition. This technology made it possible to achieve almost exact reproduction of company colors.
Let us return, however, to the Old World and, finally, turn our gaze to Russia. Did neon advertising exist here at the beginning of the 20th century? It was not possible to find reliable information, but most likely not. Almost immediately after Claude's global triumph, the First World War broke out in Europe. World War, but the volleys of its guns for Russia marked only the beginning of a series of terrible shocks. In the early 20s, when the world was experiencing the aforementioned advertising boom, the former Russian empire lay in ruins. From these ruins a new era was rising, in which commercial outdoor advertising clearly had no place. However, life takes its toll - neon light began to find use for lighting and decorative purposes as soon as the country recovered a little from wars and revolutions. But the meaning of signs, including neon ones, in the conditions of the state economy and the lack of competition, was still not advertising, but decorative and informational, and sometimes even propaganda. But for simplicity, we will call them advertising.
The first practical use of a gas-light tube for advertising purposes was by Moscow lighting engineer A. Seleznev. In 1931, he made a neon sign “GARDEN” for the city park named after Pryamikov not far from Taganskaya Square. In 1932, several gas-light neon installations were created for the Palace and Central cinemas, and argon advertising for the Grand Hotel in Moscow. In 1934, to expand the color gamut, for the first time in the USSR, phosphor powder was sprayed onto the inner walls of the tube.
Serious production of neon signs in the USSR began only in the 60s. Then the upcoming holiday - the 50th anniversary of Soviet power (1967) - served as a kind of impetus for the development of illuminated advertising. At that time, there were many small workshops producing gas-light advertising in the Union - in the Goskino system and in the system of the Ministry of Trade. There were also giants, so characteristic of the Soviet era - the Moscow Gas Light Advertising Plant, the Leningrad Gazosvet plant. They produced not only gas-light tubes, but also materials (phosphor glass, electrodes, controllers for dynamic installations) and equipment (pumping stations). The whole country worked on these materials. In the rest of the world at this time, neon was going through hard times - it was actively (but, as it later turned out, temporarily) being squeezed by new technologies for the production of light boxes with fluorescent lamps, acrylic glass and colored light-transmitting films, but in the USSR this practically did not manifest itself.
Paradoxical, but true - the last 30 years of existence Soviet Union neon signs made up the vast majority of illuminated advertising! Thousands of them were installed in different cities, often very small ones. But, as is, again, very typical for that period of our history, quantity did not mean quality. The choice of colors was small, and fading, that is, a decrease in color saturation, occurred very quickly. The electrodes were also not of high quality and suffered greatly from corrosion. It should also be noted that the composition of the glass used to make the pipes has not changed for decades. At that time, in other countries, and especially in the USA, “soft” glass (including the so-called “lead”) had long been widely used, the properties of which, in particular, better ductility, make it more convenient to use. We continued to use classic silicate glass - SL 97-1, which could only be bent along a sufficiently large radius. That is why among the neon signs of the Soviet period we mainly find large roof installations, facade signs, and we will not find small, jewelry-made pictures and inscriptions that now decorate the windows and interiors of shops, restaurants, etc. in large numbers. The technology of those years simply did not allow them to be made.
One of the reasons for all these shortcomings is that the attention paid to gas-light production in the industry of the USSR was concentrated on the production of large-scale products - lighting lamps for various needs, as well as signal and indicator lamps, etc. Neon tubes were given a secondary role. For example, reading in the reference book "Popular Library chemical elements"(Nauka Publishing House, 1977) about the industrial use of neon and argon gases, we do not find the slightest mention of gas-light lamps.
The first appearance of neon signs in the USSR dates back to the late 80s. Then in Moscow, on the roof of one of the houses on Pushkin Square, a large Cosa-Cola installation was placed. Both it and other large signs that appeared in the neighborhood later were foreign-made. But, as the first (and last) president of the Great Empire, which was already measuring its last days, said, “the process has begun.” In the early 90s, Russia, and at the same time all the other republics of the post-Soviet space, with a delay of 70 years, was overtaken by the “advertising boom”, just as it overtook the world at the dawn of the century. And at the end of the 20th century, domestic producers of new neon advertising arrived just in time.

On November 9, 1911, neon advertising was patented. the site talks about who created the red lights of Paris at night, which then lit up all over the world, about the history of the invention itself and about getting money out of thin air.

The father of neon advertising and the “French Edison,” Georges Claude was born in 1870 and at first did not even think about neon or shining signs. He graduated High school industrial physics and chemistry in Paris, after which he changed many positions: electrical inspector at a cable factory, laboratory manager for electrical work, publisher and author of the Electric Spark magazine.

Back in 1896, the scientist realized that using bottled acetylene for lighting was dangerous, since it could explode under pressure, and came up with a way to store it in acetone, but his invention did not go further than this.

Claude's other idea was to find a cheap way to liquefy air. The inventor was literally going to make money from it by selling liquefied oxygen cylinders to hospitals and welders. To do this, he and his university friend Paul Delorme opened the Liquid Air company with a starting capital of 7,500 francs. By 1902, their method made it possible to produce oxygen and nitrogen in industrial quantities. Only Claude was irritated by the inert gases (argon, neon, krypton, xenon, etc.) that were formed as by-products of this reaction.

And then Georges Claude remembered the experiments of scientists who created lamps whose operating principle was based on the passage of an electric charge through a gas. Such lamps were invented by Heinrich Geissler in the mid-19th century, but due to their low reliability and the tendency of gases to react with the electrode material, they were considered more of a curiosity than a useful invention. In 1898 (the same year neon was discovered), gas-light lamps designed by Daniel McFarlane Moore, an employee of General Electric, were installed in the chapel at Madison Square Garden in New York. “Moore tubes” were the most successful of the experiments with filling gas-light lamps: CO₂ inside gave a uniform glow, and the length of such a lamp could reach six meters. However, the whole design had a significant drawback: carbon dioxide also reacted with the substances of the electrodes, and the lamp required frequent refilling.

Inert gases, which were waste from the production of Georges Claude, are inert for that reason, so that they are reluctant to enter into chemical reactions. Out of curiosity, a Parisian inventor tried filling lamps with inert gases under low pressure. The result impressed him and his friends: the lamps began to glow with bright colors depending on the gas. So, argon burned blue, and neon burned red-orange. As it turned out later, all noble gases had their own color.

Claude's acquaintance Jean Fonsecu, seeing neon lights, suggested using such lamps as outdoor advertising. The first public demonstration of luminous tubes was the lighting at the Paris automobile show in December 1910, the technology was patented in 1911, and in 1912 the first luminous advertisement was installed in a small hair salon on the Boulevard Montmartre.

A few years later, in 1915, Claude patented new electrodes with increased corrosion resistance that would last longer outdoors. In 1919, the Paris Opera glowed with blue and red lights. The technology arose at the most opportune moment for it. Claude's new lighting fixtures were used to advertise Remington typewriters, Lucky Strike cigarettes, Eveready batteries, Packard automobiles, and other major clients. Since it was difficult to ship glass tubes with gas overseas, Georges Claude began selling licenses for the production of neon signs.

In the 1930s, patents began to expire, creating a wave of competition. More and more colors of signs began to appear (in addition to multi-colored gases, this effect could be achieved by applying phosphor to the inner walls of the tubes). The inventor himself took up other projects, in particular, finding a way to use the thermal energy of the oceans - generating electricity due to the temperature difference between the deep and surface layers waters (this is the principle used on the Pioneer submarine in the Soviet science fiction novel The Secret of Two Oceans). The first installations by Claude and his friend and mentor Jacques Arsene d'Arsonval were designed and placed in Cuba and the coast of Brazil.

Do you know that neon lamp invented as a result of experiments whose purpose was to supply liquefied oxygen to hospitals? We bring to your attention a short story about the invention of the neon lamp and the principle of its operation.

Jean Claude - inventor of the neon lamp

In fact, scientists came close to inventing the neon lamp several times before the 20th century. French astronomer Jean Piccard in 1675 discovered a mysterious faint light in the tube of a mercury barometer, the cause of which he could not explain. Many years later, in 1855, the German physicist Heinrich Geisler invented the prototype of a gas discharge tube. Neon itself was discovered in 1898 by English scientists William Ramsay and Morris Traver.

These discoveries became like separate parts that were to be combined into one invention. The inventor of the neon lamp was the Frenchman Jean Claude, an engineer with the talent of an entrepreneur. He hoped to supply liquefied oxygen to hospitals and make good money from it.

There was only one problem - inert gases prevented the production of high-quality oxygen. By removing impurities from oxygen, the practical Claude tried to find a use for them. One day he heard about “glowing tubes.” He pumped gases into tubes and passed an electric charge through them. The tubes began to glow - red from neon and blue from argon. The engineer immediately realized that this discovery would bring him commercial success.

In 1910, Jean Claude presented his neon lighting at an exhibition of achievements in Paris, and soon patented it. In 1915, he opened the Claude Neon Lights company, and licensed his technology to anyone who wanted to hang a neon sign. This made Claude wealthy very quickly - by the end of the 20s, the annual income of his company reached almost 10 million dollars.

Characteristics and principle of operation of neon lamps

Let's tell you a little about the principle of operation of neon lamps. Their design consists of glass tubes (colored or transparent), which are filled with an inert gas. Most often it is neon in its pure form or in the form of a mixture with argon. The tube is connected to a power source, and when an electrical charge passes through it, the gases inside the tube begin to glow.

As for the characteristics of neon lamps, we can note very high brightness, durability and a huge selection of shades of light. Disadvantages - neon lamps are fragile, expensive and fire hazardous. These disadvantages are the reason why neon, once incredibly popular, has lost its position. Increasingly, neon lighting on the streets has begun to be replaced with LED lighting. LED lighting is more economical, consumes less electricity, is fireproof, and resistant to atmospheric and mechanical influences.

Specifications

The lamp light has low inertia and allows brightness modulation with a frequency of up to 20 kHz. The lamps are connected to the power source through a current-limiting resistor so that the current through the lamp is no more than 1 milliampere (a typical value for miniature lamps), however, lowering the current to 0.1...0.2 mA significantly extends the life of the lamp. Some lamps have a resistor built into the base. Using a lamp without a resistor extremely dangerous, since it can lead to overgrowth of the discharge in the arc, accompanied by an increase in the current through it to a value limited only by the internal resistance of the power source and supply wires, and, as a consequence, a short circuit and (or) rupture of the lamp cylinder.

The lamp ignition voltage is usually no more than 100 volts, the extinction voltage is about 40-65 volts. Service life - 80,000 hours or more (limited by gas absorption by the glass of the bulb and darkening of the bulb from sprayed electrodes; there is simply nothing to “burn out” in the lamp).

Decorative neon lamp

Decorative neon lamp, electrodes covered with phosphor.

Domestic neon lamps

Domestic neon lamps are represented by a wide range of devices, including special ones, having different dimensions, characteristics, and electrode shapes: VMN-1, VMN-2, IN-3, IN-3A, IN-25, IN-28, IN-29 , INS-1, IF-1, MN-3, MN-4, MN-6, MN-7, MN-11, MN-15, 95SG-9, TN-0.2-2, TN-0.3 , TN-0.3-3, TN-0.5, TN-0.9, TN-1, TN-20, TN-30, TN-30-1, TN-30-2M, TNI-1.5D , TMN-2, TNU-2, as well as a large family of phosphor lamps of the TL series.

Among the lamps for special applications, the following should be noted:

• VMN-1, VMN-2 - wave-measuring neon lamps.
• IN-6 - controlled three-electrode neon lamp. It is not a thyratron; it has a slightly different principle of operation. The discharge in it is constantly lit, but, depending on the control voltage, it jumps either to the indicator cathode or to the auxiliary cathode. Such a lamp is controlled by a negative voltage of several V applied to the indicator cathode. The lamp electrodes are located in such a way that when the discharge is lit on the indicator cathode, it is clearly visible to the operator, when on the auxiliary cathode it is not.
• IN-21 is a lamp that can withstand high temperatures without negative consequences, and therefore is used in electric stoves, in particular, the Electra-1001 model. It has electrodes made in the shape of semicircles and is highly aesthetic.
• IN-25 is a neon lamp with a reduced ratio of the diameter of the cylinder to the diameter of the luminous spot, for matrix displays with improved ergonomic characteristics.
• IN-28 - three-electrode neon lamps with flexible leads, having a service life of at least 5000 hours, despite the significant discharge current (up to 15.6 mA). They are used in the subway as single elements of over-tunnel displays of the ESIC system.
• IF-1 is an ultraviolet radiation indicator, in particular for flame sensors. The principle of operation is unknown, apparently, the lamp is supplied with a voltage slightly below the ignition voltage, and in the presence of radiation it lights up.
• MH-3 - lamp with reduced combustion voltage (about 40 V). The electrodes are made of pure iron, molybdenum, nickel. The cathodes are coated with a thin film of barium, calcium or cesium to reduce combustion voltage.

The designations of domestic phosphor neon lamps consist of the letters TL, a letter indicating the color of the glow (O - orange, G - blue, Z - green), a number characterizing the rated discharge current in mA, and a number characterizing the ignition voltage in hundreds of volts. For example, TLO-1-1 is an orange lamp with a current of 1 mA and an ignition voltage of 100 V.

Foreign neon lamps

NE-2 in different colors

In the past, indicator and decorative neon lamps of various designs and dimensions were produced abroad. Currently, only a limited assortment of decorative figured neon lamps is produced, and of the indicator models in mass production, there is essentially only one left - the subminiature NE-2, the design of which has not undergone any significant changes in over 50 years. However, this lamp is now available in several sizes. In addition to conventional lamps of this type, phosphor lamps are also produced: green (NE-2G), blue (NE-2B), white (NE-2W) and others. Moreover, of the phosphor varieties of this lamp, only green is widely used, and models of other colors are scarce.

Literature

• Genis A. A., Gornshtein I. L., Pugach A. B. Glow discharge devices. Kyiv, Tekhnika, 1970.
• Zgursky V. S., Lisitsyn B. L. Indication elements. M.: Energy, 1980. - 304 p., ill.
• Gurlev D.S. Handbook of electronic devices. Kyiv, 1974.

see also

Notes

Neon lamps are the brightest new lighting products, characterized by maximum efficiency and a long service life. Therefore, today they are used in a variety of areas of human activity, including lighting of buildings and interior lighting of premises.

A neon lamp is a glass tube filled with gas under reduced pressure.

Advantages and disadvantages

Let's consider the main advantages of lighting devices that are in demand today, such as a neon lamp:

1. enough bright effect Sveta;
2. long service life - for 80,000 hours;
3. lamps of various shapes can be made;
4. does not heat up, which means it is fireproof;
5. you can choose a device with any white backlight;
6. you can control the brightness;
7. it works without noise.

But it is worth considering that although such lighting is used everywhere, it also has its disadvantages:

1. contains harmful substances;
2. needs to high voltage network, in addition, a high-voltage transformer will be required;
3. high price.

How do they work?

A neon lamp consists of a bulb in which the following processes occur: when moving, electrons collide with neutral gas atoms, which are fillers in this area, and begin to ionize them, pushing electrons from the upper area into the container. The atoms, in turn, collide with electrons, again becoming neutral atoms. Thanks to this reverse transformation, a quantum of light energy is emitted. As you can see, the operating principle of neon lamps is not very complicated.

When turned on, such devices do not heat up much - the heating temperature reaches a maximum of 80 °C. It is for this reason that neon tubes are also commonly called cold cathode lamps. Their scope of application is quite wide, as they are durable, economical and functionally flexible. The main advantage of such light bulbs is that they can have any shape you like.

Any inert gas and metal vapor has its own spectral light composition:

• helium tubes emit light yellow or pale pink light;
• neon tubes - red light;
• argon tubes - blue light.

Application of neon strips

It should be noted that on the neon lighting market you can also find neon strips or, as they are commonly called, flexible neon. They are an LED garland sealed in a PVC tube. Flexible neons are divided into multi-colored and monotonous. They are made from high quality PVC pipes and can be either transparent or matte. Single-color options are made from matte tube.

The tape, in comparison with a light bulb, has numerous advantages, among which it is worth noting:

• there is no risk of mechanical damage. Glass lamps break very often, so they can be very dangerous, in particular if you want to decorate a nursery with them. But the tape has no such drawback;
• waterproofing;
• you can use RGB technology;
• The tape is flexible, which makes it possible to install it in almost any room or outside a building. As a result, the backlight turns out to be quite mobile;
• the tape will cost less when compared with the LED option. LED strips not a great buy in all cases.

Neon strips are quite in demand, and over time they can even push some types of lighting devices out of the market. They have a fairly wide range of light, for this reason they are widely used in various fields.

Application area

Both lamps and cords consisting of inert gases are used everywhere. They began to be used for:

1. production of hidden lighting;
2. decorative design of the external area of ​​buildings, architectural structures, monuments and so on;
3. lighting of advertising structures;
4. decorating unusual interiors in any residential premises and other public places.

Neon lamps used today in home interior design look very organic and presentable. With their help, you can transform any room and add your own special touch to the decoration style. They are indispensable for organizing a picnic in the evening; you can use them to create an extraordinary atmosphere.

In everyday life, such a tape is also very valuable. It is an ideal solution for illuminating the ceiling area, aquarium, as well as any cabinet. You can make sure that when you open the cabinet, the light installed in it using a neon cord automatically turns on.

The tape can also be useful in the kitchen area - if it is noticeably dark when washing dishes or preparing food. You can simply install a neon strip of the required length in the required area. And there are a huge number of such ways to use this tape.

As you can see, the scope of application of such universal lighting devices is quite extensive. This is explained by their advantages, among which it is worth noting high quality and beautiful luminous flux. Only LED strip can compete with them.