Decline in real neon signs.

[Jon_G4MDC]

I found myself on a roof top in Korea, some way South of Seoul, looking for the antennas of a cellular repeater installation.

What's this with the big ceramic insulators sticking out? Is it alive or dead?
I don't know so I gave it a very wide berth.

Oh and the big video screens which light up a whole street? They had those in Seoul in the mid to late 1990s.

Technology unknown.

[paulsherwin]

Originally Posted by sexton_mallard

The beauty of a real neon sign is when it switches off and a clear colourless tube is visible until the orangy red plasma discharge returns. A lot of more recent tubing appears to be customised CFL tubing with a colour foil or varnish applied.
.
I agree the loss of neon signs is a loss of heritage. The flat display screens hold little appeal personally.

Neon signage has been largely replaced by fluorescent technology for decades. More recently tubes containing strings of LEDs have become standard.

I agree these look worse - it's a bit like the change from 120V lighting to LV in travelling fairgrounds in the 1980s, presumably on safety grounds.

[Graham G3ZVT]

My wife's late uncle used to run a barbers shop, there was a small neon sign advertising a well-known prophylactic, I don't know what became of it.

The chemist shop round the corner from here had an outside neon sign (this one simply said "Chemist") that put out interference for about half a mile.

[Richard_FM]

I've noticed a lot of modern illuminated sights seem to be LED based.

The Plaza in Stockport seems to struggle to have all the tubes on the outside working at the same time.

[Jac]

Some years ago I was able to buy this very fragile shop neon.
It was in a sorry state, but I restored it, made a protection box around it and it has now pride of place.



Jac

[autosparkii]

I must say I love real neon. I keep a small collection of signs and table top novelties, reality is that it costs alot to make a neon sign/sculpture.

something about the very narrow colors.

I also love neon light reflected off a wet road for some reason. other sources just don't seem to do it.

[joebog1]

Good job Jac!!.
Ten points!!.
Seems there are a few that like dodgy-tal stuff. BUT, you cannot beat memories, and the original article.

Joe

[Jac]

Thanks Joe!

Jac

[regenfreak]

Not quite dead yet. There are a number of neon sign making workshops and artists in the UK. Google them in your area. I still own many heavy iron cored neon sign transformers at home...

[Panrock]

What would be the voltage and current of a typical neon sign?

Steve

[The Philpott]

10kV @ around 15mA (current depending on size) i would guess. Mainland Europe were higher than UK at one point, 15kV i believe.

Dave

[regenfreak]

Between 6k to 10kV. Voltage depends on the length of the sign. I have a few 10kV 50ma Fart transformers. Fart is a famous neon sign transformer maker in Italy and is not a joke.

[Richard_FM]

One famous neon sign was fitted to the Westinghouse building in Pittsburgh.

It was controlled by one of their computers & supposedly could light it in millions of different combinations, but normally it normally only had about 120 patterns programmed in, but operators would change them occasionally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Sign

[The Philpott]

Indeed, my jacob's ladder is powered by a 10kV 25mA FART transformer. (Also not a joke.)

An issue with the LED light pipes that pretend to be neons is of course that if exposed the rain gets in sooner or later, and they rot. Being DC doesn't help.

Dave

[broadgage]

Originally Posted by rambo1152

My wife's late uncle used to run a barbers shop, there was a small neon sign advertising a well-known prophylactic, I don't know what became of it.

Some of the neon signs advertising that product had a most distinctive feature whereby the luminous discharge continually moved around in a "wriggling" fashion within the glass tube.

IIRC this was achieved by the tube containing small pieces of glass. The discharge therefore had to find a path between these insulating pieces. This path continually changed several times a second.

[Nickthedentist]

A little OT, but were my mother’s family odd in referring to the fluorescent strip light in the kitchen as “the neon light”?

Mum was born in 1941 but still listened to the “gramophone” and the “wireless” until someone teased her about it about 20 years ago.

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by Nickthedentist

A little OT, but were my mother’s family odd in referring to the fluorescent strip light in the kitchen as “the neon light”?

Emphatically no!
Not only because I'm sure I've heard that trait myself, but also because neon lamps evolved into fluorescents.

Thus is from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluore...amp#Neon_lamps

"The development of the neon light also was significant for the last key element of the fluorescent lamp, its fluorescent coating.[14] In 1926 Jacques Risler received a French patent for the application of fluorescent coatings to neon light tubes"

Also there is far more neon (along with some other noble gasses) than mercury vapour in a florescent tube.

Finally, (someone always has to mention this pedantry, and it might as well be me) only orange neon tubes use neon as their main gas.

[Nickthedentist]

Thanks Graham, very interesting.

[raditechman]

There was a lot of fuss by local people when a Lucozade advertising sign which was installed in 1954 was removed in 2016 and replaced with a large digital screen.
The sign in Brentford was easily seen by motorists approaching central London on the elevated M4
I think the old sign is now in Gunnersbury museum.

John

[The General]

Another fan of real neon signs here, it seems a shame that there seem to be so few in commercial use these days & I feel that their replacement by flat screen monitors is a great loss. (dodgy-tal, that's going to be my new buzzword now, thanks Joe!). The LED 'neon' lookalikes also don't have the same appeal, they just look cheap to me.
Some people seem to have a real aversion to neon, in MK there's a pub/restaurant next to one of the lakes, it has a stone tower meant to look like an old windmill. It had a large green neon sign on the side with the pub name which could be seen from the nearby A5 dual carriageway. Of course the inevitable happened, some misery (or miseries) complained about it & the council made them take it down. (do neon signs need planning permission?) That was several years ago & it never reappeared. Thing is, it didn't overlook any private house, the nearest other buildings are on an industrial estate the other side of the A5. Shame, it was a nice sign.