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Isotopes: Carbon Monoxide Moore Tubes Nitrogen Georges Claude Air Liquide Neon Lighting

Ramsay and Travers discovered neon in 1898 by extracting it from liquid air. Neon's scarcity initially prevented its widespread commercial use, but Georges Claude's company began producing neon on an industrial scale in 1902 as a byproduct of air liquefaction. In 1910, Claude demonstrated neon lighting in sealed tubes, though it was first used commercially in eye-catching advertising signs in 1912. Neon lighting transformed cities and became associated with progress and modernity in the 1920s. J.J. Thomson's 1913 experiments with neon helped discover isotopes when he observed two distinct patterns of neon atom deflection, the first evidence that some neon atoms had different masses.

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Isotopes: Carbon Monoxide Moore Tubes Nitrogen Georges Claude Air Liquide Neon Lighting

Ramsay and Travers discovered neon in 1898 by extracting it from liquid air. Neon's scarcity initially prevented its widespread commercial use, but Georges Claude's company began producing neon on an industrial scale in 1902 as a byproduct of air liquefaction. In 1910, Claude demonstrated neon lighting in sealed tubes, though it was first used commercially in eye-catching advertising signs in 1912. Neon lighting transformed cities and became associated with progress and modernity in the 1920s. J.J. Thomson's 1913 experiments with neon helped discover isotopes when he observed two distinct patterns of neon atom deflection, the first evidence that some neon atoms had different masses.

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chandan
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as also reported along with neon, having approximately the same density as argon but with a

different spectrum Ramsay and Travers named it metargon.[16][17]" However, subsequent


spectroscopic analysis revealed it to be argon contaminated with carbon monoxide. Finally, the same
team discovered xenon by the same process, in September 1898. [16]
Neon's scarcity precluded its prompt application for lighting along the lines of Moore tubes, which
used nitrogen and which were commercialized in the early 1900s. After 1902, Georges Claude's
company, Air Liquide, produced industrial quantities of neon as a byproduct of his air liquefaction
business. In December 1910 Claude demonstrated modern neon lighting based on a sealed tube of
neon. Claude tried briefly to sell neon tubes for indoor domestic lighting, due to their intensity, but the
market failed because homeowners objected to the color. In 1912, Claude's associate began selling
neon discharge tubes as eye-catching advertising signs and was instantly more successful. Neon
tubes were introduced to the U.S. in 1923 with two large neon signs bought by a Los Angeles
Packard car dealership. The glow and arresting red color made neon advertising completely different
from the competition.[18] The intense color and vibrancy of neon equated with American society at the
time, suggesting a "century of progress" and transforming cities into sensational new environments
filled with radiating advertisements and "electro-graphic architecture." [19][20]
Neon played a role in the basic understanding of the nature of atoms in 1913, when J. J. Thomson,
as part of his exploration into the composition of canal rays, channeled streams of neon ions through
a magnetic and an electric field and measured the deflection of the streams with a photographic
plate. Thomson observed two separate patches of light on the photographic plate (see image), which
suggested two different parabolas of deflection. Thomson eventually concluded that some of
the atoms in the neon gas were of higher mass than the rest. Though not understood at the time by
Thomson, this was the first discovery of isotopes of stable atoms. Thomson's device was a crude
version of the instrument we now term a mass spectrometer.

Isotopes

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