Neon Light
When Georges Claude, the great French inventor, discovered a rare kind of gas, Neon, in 1901, there was a problem. No one knew what it could be used for, and it took almost twenty years before Claude could find a practical benefit of his discovery.
After experimenting with it Claude and colleagues found some of its interesting properties. One of them was that it used to glow red when an electrical charge was passed through it. This gave Claude the idea of producing light in an entirely new way. He made Neon tubes which could be used like ordinary bulbs. The only problem was that nobody wanted a red light in their homes.
Undeterred by this failure, Claude continued to think of ways for using his invention. Then he found that by bending the tubes, one could make letters which glowed. This idea found many potential users, and the use of neon tubes for advertising signs began in 1923.
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