Oldest neon signs

The oldest surviving neon signs are a series of experimental signs dating from 1909 that were created by physicist Perley G Nutting and master glass craftsman Edward O Sperling (both USA) while working for the US National Bureau of Standards (now called the National Institutes of Standards and Technology) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA. They were first put on display in April 1910 and examples can now be found in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and at the headquarters National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST), though the latter ones may be slightly later iterations.

The early examples of neon lighting built on the work of other lighting pioneers such as Daniel McFarlan Moore (USA), who is credited with developing the first luminous tubing (albeit using carbon dioxide and nitrogen, rather than noble gases such as neon). He first demonstrated his what-he-dubbed "etheric lighting" while presenting a paper to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers on 22 April 1896, illuminating the entire hall with tube-lighting and for an added flourish using it to also spell out "Let there be light" and "AIEE" on the walls. What came to be called "Moore tubing" or "Moore lighting" was available commercially from 1903.

The year 1909 also witnessed the first neon sign being used for commercial purposes to advertise a product/service: engineers John Madine and Russell Trimble (both USA) – while employed by Moore (above) – created a neon sign that spelt out "Ingersoll" for the Ingersoll Watch Company in Newark, New Jersey, USA.

All of these examples precede the work of French lighting engineer Georges Claude (founder of Claude Neon), who is often credited as the father of neon and luminous tubes. In particular, his spectacular illuminated display at the Paris Motor Show held at the Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées in December 1910 is often heralded as a first-of-its-kind. While undoubtedly a major pioneer in this field, particularly when it came to creating outdoor neon advertising signs that we are most familiar with today, it's more accurate to say that Claude was building on others' work and was then very successful at commercializing and patenting these novel technologies.

Nutting and Sperling's experimental signs comprised neon-filled glass tubes with aluminium electrodes, mounted onto wooden boxes. The tubes spelled out relevant words such as NBS (the initials for the National Bureau of Standards), Helium, Neon, Argon and Hydrogen. There are claims that Nutting may have displayed a prototype of the Neon sign five years earlier at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904, but this is debated.

As of 2024, two of the signs in their complete state - NBS and Helium - are housed at the Smithsonian Institution. Examples of Helium, Neon, Argon and Hydrogen can be found at NIST HQ, but these are missing their original wooden boxes, and so may be later versions.