Wiktionary
n. lighting by neon lamps
Wikipedia
Neon lighting consists of brightly glowing, electrified glass tubes or bulbs that contain rarefied neon or other gases. Neon lights are a type of cold cathode gas-discharge light. A neon tube light is a sealed glass tube with a metal electrode at each end, filled with one of a number of gases at low pressure. A high potential of several thousand volts applied to the electrodes ionizes the gas in the tube, causing it to emit colored light. The color of the light depends on the gas in the tube. Neon lights were named for neon, a noble gas which gives off a popular orange light, but other gases and chemicals are used to produce other colors, such as hydrogen (red), helium (yellow), carbon dioxide (white), and mercury (blue). Neon tubes can be fabricated in curving artistic shapes, to form letters or pictures. They are mainly used to make dramatic, multicolored glowing signage for advertising, called neon signs, which were popular from the 1920s to the 1950s.
The term can also refer to the miniature neon glow lamp, developed in 1917, about seven years after neon tube lighting. While neon tube lights are typically meters long, the neon lamps can be less than one centimeter in length and glow much more dimly than the tube lights. They are still in use as small indicator lights. Through the 1970s, neon glow lamps were widely used for numerical displays in electronics, for small decorative lamps, and as signal processing devices in circuity. While these lamps are now antiques, the technology of the neon glow lamp developed into contemporary plasma displays and televisions.
Georges Claude, a French engineer and inventor, presented neon tube lighting in essentially its modern form at the Paris Motor Show from December 3–18, 1910. Claude, sometimes called "the Edison of France", had a near monopoly on the new technology, which became very popular for signage and displays in the period 1920-1940. Neon lighting was an important cultural phenomenon in the United States in that era; by 1940, the downtowns of nearly every city in the US were bright with neon signage, and Times Square in New York City was known worldwide for its neon extravagances. There were 2000 shops nationwide designing and fabricating neon signs. The popularity, intricacy, and scale of neon signage for advertising declined in the U.S. following the Second World War (1939–1945), but development continued vigorously in Japan, Iran, and some other countries. In recent decades architects and artists, in addition to sign designers, have again adopted neon tube lighting as a component in their works.
Neon lighting is closely related to fluorescent lighting, which developed about 25 years after neon tube lighting. In fluorescent lights, the light emitted by rarefied gases within a tube is used exclusively to excite fluorescent materials that coat the tube, which then shine with their own colors that become the tube's visible, usually white, glow. Fluorescent coatings and glasses are also an option for neon tube lighting, but are usually selected to obtain bright colors.
Usage examples of "neon lighting".
Blood floated on top of the water like an oil slick, throwing off patterns that picked up the garish neon lighting surrounding the pit.
As each horse was led in under the glare of the neon lighting, the auctioneer, the redoubtable Swinebroad from Tennessee, would give the history of the horse and start the bidding at what he thought a likely figure, and run it up through the hundreds in a kind of rhythmic chant, catching, with the help of two dinnerr-jacketed men in the aisles, every nod or raised pencil among, the tiers of smartly dressed owners and agents.
No need to switch on any lights -- the laboratory was already brilliantly illuminated by shadow less neon lighting.
Far below the streets were rivers of neon lighting, crimson, blue, green.
More bullet holes had been stitched along one wall, running up into the sloping ceiling, taking out two strips of neon lighting and one of the probing sec cameras.
Dusk crept across the Blue Ocean Holiday Camp, its approach scarcely noticeable in the dazzling glare from multi-coloured neon lighting.
Strip neon lighting kept it well illuminated, though some of the tubes had, not surprisingly, burned out over the past century.
I saw a glint of bright-red neon lighting, limned against ill-fitting doors.
Baseball, amusement arcades, hot dogs, hideously large bosoms, neon lighting - these are the part of our payment for defeat in battle.
He was surprised to discover that it was night when he stepped out into the street, holding onto a wall for support, the bright neon lighting dazzling him.
The stores on Grand Street were either old and narrow but not tawdry or else well modernized with plate glass and stainless steel fronts and neon lighting in clear crisp colors.