00:00Transcription by ESO. Translation by —
00:13When the Hoover Dam was completed in 1936,
00:16it created a huge source of hydroelectric power
00:20and zapped a sleepy desert town to life—
00:23Las Vegas, Nevada.
00:25With the power supply from the dam,
00:27Las Vegas soon exploded with vibrant displays.
00:31The source of these dazzling lights was electrified neon gas.
00:37There are two tricky obstacles to making lighted signs
00:40out of this naturally clear, odorless gas—
00:43capturing it and making it glow.
00:46French inventor Georges Claude came up with techniques to do both.
00:50In 1902, he developed a way of liquefying and separating specific gases from the air,
00:57producing neon on an industrial scale for the first time.
01:01By 1910, he had come up with a way to trap the gas in a glass tube
01:05with a special electrode at either end,
01:08and neon lighting was born.
01:11In workshops like Clothes, artisans known as tube benders
01:16made neon signs by hand.
01:18The tube benders heated small sections of a long hollow glass tube
01:24and quickly bent them into shape.
01:26After the glass cooled, they attached electrodes to each end
01:31and removed the air with a vacuum pump.
01:34Then they passed a high voltage current through the tube
01:38to remove any impurities on the inside of the glass.
01:42Finally, they pumped the neon gas in and sealed off the electrodes.
01:48When a neon sign is turned on,
01:51the electric current causes some of the neon atoms' electrons
01:55to accelerate and break free of their orbits,
01:58leaving behind positively charged ions.
02:01As these free electrons rush from one electrode to the other,
02:05they collide with more neon atoms, causing them to ionize as well.
02:10When these excited electrons fall back to their normal energy levels,
02:15their excess energy is carried away by photons, or particles of light.
02:21All this happens in an instant,
02:23and the glow from the photons is what we see when we switch on a neon sign.
02:28Though it's common to call any gas-filled sign a neon sign,
02:32there are actually five different gases used in production.
02:36Each gas emits photons of a different wavelength when electrified,
02:40which corresponds to different colors of light.
02:42Neon gives off an orange-red glow,
02:45argon glows a pale lavender,
02:47helium a dusty pink,
02:49krypton a silver-white,
02:51and xenon a light purple.
02:54These five gases can be combined with color-coded tubing
02:57to create an electrified rainbow of text and images.
03:04Business owners soon realized how effective these colorful beacons were
03:08for attracting customers.
03:10And unlike a light bulb,
03:12a neon sign has no incandescent filaments to burn out
03:16and can shine continuously for 40 years before the gas depletes.
03:21By the 1930s, neon signs were lighting up storefronts all over the world.
03:26Because of the glass tube's fragile nature,
03:29it usually wasn't feasible to ship them over long distances.
03:33Instead, most neon signs were created by local neon shops
03:37and then installed nearby.
03:39Signs with humor, personality, and intricate designs proliferated,
03:43no two exactly alike.
03:46But by the end of World War II,
03:48plastics had become widely available and inexpensive,
03:52and plastic signs supplanted neon as messengers of modernity.
03:56Many towns removed neon signs they viewed as old-fashioned.
04:00Today, neon sign production is only a fraction of what it was at its peak.
04:05But the craft of tube bending lives on relatively unchanged.
04:17New creations handcrafted by local artisans join survivors from the heyday of neon,
04:23hiding in plain sight in city streets around the world.
04:35to live in calming area and tries.
04:37In this city, it's been delayed
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