Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Neon!

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why neon is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5(Alex’s old podcast hosting service required a minimum of 5 characters per episode title, and he's keeping that going for fun. So that’s why this episode’s title has an exclamation point)

Neon. Known for being lights. Famous for being bright. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why neon is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of neon? Well, you know, it's tubes full of light. It's probably fairies. That's, you know, probably little fairies in there. You trap them, you shove them in a tube and you shake it it up, and the fairies get agitated, and they give off light. This whole episode is going to be a guide to fairy capture. Basically, if you want to be the villain in a movie about Tinkerbell, this is how. I'm just saying that Tinkerbell, if she wants to earn her keep, she's got to light up some signs for me.

Yeah. I mean, I uh neon lights to be beautiful i like them um i remember i played a game when i was very young and in the game it was actually called spelunks so any spelunks heads out there shout out to you and like in the game it was sort of like an exploratory game for young kids, I guess. And there was a part where you could like put different elements inside of a glass tube and it would shine different colors. And I found that really interesting as a kid and then just did not follow up on that or learn more about that.

And so now as an adult, I'm really interested to learn more about neon. Cool. It almost sounds like the game trained you to do the role in life we were joking about. So that's great. That's good. Yeah. It's good you chose not to pursue it. You went on the good path. Yeah. Fairies are free. My fairies are free. I am not someone who goes around putting fairies in tubes. That's a lie. Yeah. And I did not have very much relationship with this topic either way, because also thank you to Donna, supporter of this show, friend of the show, artist, especially on our Discord. She suggested Neon And the resulting episode

here is kind of two episodes. We'll do the chemical element neon. It's on the periodic table. And then we'll do the signage and the lights and stuff. And both are amazing. And the lights have something to do with the element, right? Or is that a red herring? It's real. The first ones were full of it. And then we'll talk later about how it's somewhat been replaced, but the first ones were full of it. That's not a made up thing. I assume all light now is led. I think all lights are led and I'm, I'm pretty sure I'm right about that. We did, we did a batteries episode recently, which was kind of the first, first one about an element, especially the element lithium. And so, yeah,

I'm very, I'm very into that futuristic, uh, just displays and diodes kind of thing that has somewhat replaced neon. It's very on my mind. We're working our way through the periodic table. We're going to have a gallium episode and I'm pumped for that. I'm lying. We're not having a gallium episode, but if you want one, maybe we will. I don't know. Buddy, there is a gallium story coming today. Oh my God. I'm so excited. That's, I'm...

It's weird. Can we just acknowledge what a genius I am at saying words and having those words also happen in the future? That's part of the show. It's great. I love it. Happen in the future. That's part of the show. It's great. I love it.

Every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week, that's in a segment called... Number crunching in the dead of night. Take these stats and facts you can't deny. All your life you were only waiting for these numbers to arrive. I was kind of doing a guitar thing and then I like but then I got too into the melody and then I just I feel like I turned into a bird or something. Folks, I gave Katie the much more challenging task there. I told her, I'm probably going to cut that part out, but I told her like, okay, do the guitar thing. And she just needed to do a guitar thing while I had the very easy, straightforward lyrics of the song.

Before we started recording, he's like, do a guitar thing, but like, like you know coming out of your mouth and it's like okay just yes that's easy enough yeah i mean my normal phrasings right saying the concept of singing yeah you know just do it as if you're barfing out a little guitar thanks alex great stage direction and thank you so much m the Jackalope on the Discord. M, wonderful suggestion. We have a new name for this every week. Please make a Massillion Wacky and Bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpod at gmail.com.

And very first number here is 10 because neon is number 10 on the periodic table. That means it has 10 protons. Show off. Why does it need all those protons, huh? It is. It's relatively heavy for being an extremely common element in the universe. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to proton shame, but that's a good amount of protons, isn't it? And the more protons you have, right, like the weaker the atomic forces are, I think I remember, like the larger the atom, the more unstable it is.

Like the easier it is for those bonds to kind of break or for electrons to kind of fall off. Yeah, normally yes. And then neon is called a noble gas or an inert gas. So it's a set of electrons. Oh, it's a noble gas. Why didn't you say so? I would have set out for the croque-machos. Look, listen, England.

If you didn't have so many nobles, we wouldn't be doing funny British voices. Okay? It's on you. It's you and your king's fault. Talk about noble gas. All right. King Charles. But it's stinky in there.

After dinner at Buckingham Palace. Right. Anyway. Because the next number here, much more specific, it is 0.0018%. Yeah, of course. I know. Right. Yeah. Another way to say that is 18 parts per million. I'm sure everybody was saying that at home. 18 parts per million. 18 parts per million. Yes. That is how much of the air is neon. The air around us on earth is a tiny but substantial amount of neon. So how much air I got to breathe to have some neon?

A lot. Yeah. But also any amount because it's just there. And that brings us to an immediate takeaway. Number one. You are breathing in neon right now. What? Right now? Yeah. Both of us. Everybody listening. Wait, what about now? Yep neon right now. What? Right now? Yeah. Both of us. Everybody listening. Wait, what about now?

Yep. Right now. Also now? Yep. Still now. Okay. Wow. That's so... Okay. So it's just around there and I could be breathing it in right now. The parts of air, it's not one of the main parts. It turns out what we call air is a mixture of 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. So 99% of it is nitrogen and oxygen. But then there's a few other gases, in particular argon, which is another noble gas.

And then carbon dioxide, hydrogen, water vapor, and our topic this week, neon, are the main other things in air. I know about Argon. He defeated Sauron and helped Frodo out. Good guy. Yeah, but air isn't just nothingness. It is like an atomic soup full of elements, some more voluminous than others. We've got a lot of oxygen, which is good because we need that. A lot of nitrogen and oxygen. There's all sorts of little guys in there, just like a stew, like an air stew.

Air is almost an ultimate SIF topic. Like we're just breathing it always. In general, most of us are just dealing with regular air all of the time. If you're in some sort of submarine or spaceship, maybe it's a different composition. But it's just kind of going on. It is truly SIF, the air around us. Sort of the original recipe air, original flavor. But yeah, it's got a little bit of neon in there.

So that's pretty neat. Can it hurt us? Are we fine? Is it OK to keep breathing? Yeah, it turns out. Yes. It's just fine that neon, uh, gas that we think of as like colored tube lighting gas is also just something we're breathing. It's fine. Okay. That's good. I was holding my breath the whole time. Cause I was worried that if I was breathing in neon, uh, even while I was talking that whole time, holding my breath.

What if I cut to an ad for the antidote to neon or some kind of exploitative fake science thing? Like, don't worry, I'll save you from the neon. Knee off. Not neon, knee off. Apply directly to the lungs. And the air around us is the start of this whole story, because the next number here is 1898, the year 1898. That's the year when British chemist William Ramsey discovered the element neon. We have known it as a thing since 1898. So what did he go, like, did he go around with like a butterfly net catching neon in the air and putting it in a tube?

I, not really, but kind of. Yeah. The only reason we know about it is careful analysis of air. Yeah. Also, the name neon comes from the Greek word for new, because it was one of many new elements in a row. And the next number here is 1894. A few years earlier, 1894. That is when chemist William Ramsey and another British chemist named John William Strutt, but usually called Lord Rayleigh, because he was an actual noble in the British aristocracy, Lord Rayleigh.

They discovered the element argon, another noble gas, 1894. Is that why they call them noble gases? Because nobles couldn't shut up about them? Right. The House of Lords was just full of chatter about Krypton and Radon. Can you believe this? And huffing it, you know? No, but really, why is it? Why are they called noble gases?

Yeah, noble gases are named that because of our concept of nobility. Apparently, because nobility don't work day to day, they don't labor like a wage laborer. It's considered that they do nothing. And noble gases are considered to do nothing chemically. They aren't constantly reacting to other things. The idea is like nobles are just don't react to stuff. You can't provoke a noble. And that's why they're called noble gases. And if there's one thing we've learned from old European history,

it's that nobles are real chill. They don't ever start whole wars for dumb reasons. Yes. Yes. Yes. They are eating their little finger sandwiches and totally not starting wars on a whim. So neon is a noble gas. It's inert. And so, like, how did they discover it was in the air?

Yeah. That leads us into takeaway number two. The discovery of neon and argon and the other noble gases almost broke the periodic table. When these were discovered, the periodic table was a pretty new idea. And they discovered it because they understood the other elements in air, but were confused why there was just something else there. And then that discovery caused a lot of chaos with the adoption and understanding of the periodic table. Interesting. So like what was the beef? What was wrong? Why were people unable to accept neon as existing?

The thing was, it was mainly one guy wouldn't accept it, which is Dmitry Mendeleev, a Russian chemist who really theorized and pioneered a periodic table. He was upset that these guys in Britain were saying there was an entire family of elements that no one understood yet called the noble gases. So this other guy was just saying, like, it only has these numbers of elements and we're done. There's no more elements. He claimed that his system did accommodate some elements with the atomic numbers of these things that they were finding and would eventually confirm the atomic number of. But he questioned their results. He said, for instance, that argon was probably just a heavy version of nitrogen, which was like a pretty plausible theory because there's tons of nitrogen in air. And also if nitrogen had extra neutrons that would make it

heavier and it could potentially line up with these results they were getting. So he was wrong, but he had reasonable reasons to argue with these results they were getting. So he was wrong, but he had reasonable reasons to argue with these guys. I see. Interesting. And the way the periodic table works and the atomic numbers is these are not just sort of numbers of like you come first and you come second. Now you're third. It's like this is the number of protons. So you could have like some extra neutrons and be sort of a heavy version of an element, but you would have the same number of protons that would sort of distinguish you as like, say, a hydrogen or something. Yeah, that's right. And an atom can gain or lose electrons and

just become an ion of the same element. And these noble gases really don't tend to do those reactions. They have an amount of electrons fitting their protons that is extremely stable. And then on top of that, the noble gases are odorless and colorless. And so it took a long time until the late, late 1800s for, you know, people to quote unquote discover them. When we talk about discovering an element, it's really people classifying it and writing down information about it, but we're always around the elements all the time. So, okay. So, so this guy, Dimitri something or other was, had this idea that no, these elements don't exist because it's just a heavier version. Did he think like, basically there weren't like

that these elements stopped before the noble gases and that there were no more beyond that? Yeah, he he had a sketched out periodic table based on a lot of groups of elements, like a lot of similar minerals, especially he had figured out. But there were definitely big holes in the table in terms of atomic numbers. For example, two, we had not discovered the element helium yet, which is number two on the periodic table. About a quarter of all of the universe is made of helium, but helium is a noble gas. And so this whole family of elements was not discovered yet. And Mendeleev just sort of insisted that the initial discovery of a noble gas, which was argon, he insisted that particular discovery was probably just confusing nitrogen and that these guys were wrong. It was like, we all agree there's an 18 out there, argon. But like, I don't think it's this thing you found.

I think it's something else. out there are gone. But like, I don't think it's this thing you found. I think it's something else. I have this memory of being in middle school and having a teacher. And I remember asking the teacher, well, why are there only this number of elements and why couldn't there be more? And I think the actual answer is just the atom will become too unstable. Like you start to have these heavier and heavier elements and some like, they're not just like hanging out in the air because they're too heavy, they're too unstable. But her answer was just like,

cause that's all there is. And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, that's all there is. I'm like, but why? And she's like, because there's no other ones. I'm like, that is not an answer. Hey, science class is not for asking questions, okay? Get out of here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool it with the theories and wondering, all right? Wonder in my science class? Stop it. So, but I'm assuming these other guys who discovered neon and argon and the other noble gases kind of won out in the end. They were proven correct. Yeah, that's right. There's basically two processes that led to the discovery and confirmation of neon and also its friends argon and the other noble gases.

Oh, they're friends. Also, they get along great can confirm take away like we said like nobles they just party and have dinners yeah just sipping tea getting fed grapes by the lesser elements yeah they don't leak dirty stories about each other to the sun newspaper or anything it's a very calm group group. But the two processes leading to neon, one is that development of the periodic table. And we don't mean to be too critical of Dmitry Mendeleev, he accomplished a lot. He's a Russian chemist who in 1869 published a paper that claimed that known chemical elements could be organized into a list by their atomic weight, and that also

certain characteristics about them recur as you run down the list. Everything from the type of chemical and mineral to the density, you could do a rough prediction based on the other known elements. And then Mendeleev had a lot of success with this idea because the next element discovered after he published was in 1875, French chemists discovered an element that they called gallium. Wow, the gallium story that you predicted. I mean, I'm trying to figure out the etymology of gallium because I thought that, I mean, in Italian, galli are, I think, roosters. and galli are, I think, roosters. Roosters are a symbol of France, so it might be connected to that. But the name gallium is from the Latin gallia for gall, for France, like the historical name of France.

So it was French guys naming it after France. It was a whole French thing. Of course they would. Very French of them. Yeah. Très Francais. So they discovered gallium, and that is, what is gallium? Gallium is a metallic element. And Mendeleev's table accurately predicted its atomic weight

and its similarity to aluminum. It's often liquid in a way that Mendeleev did not predict. It's sort of like mercury that way. Doesn't it kind of melt at room temperature? Like you have to keep it sort of cold to keep it solid. It's sort of like water in that way, but it's a metal. because none of them were discovered. So Mendeleev's table that helps you find elements through other comparable elements, it didn't help find an entire missing family. You needed to start finding any of them to get the rest. Good job, Mendeleev.

Nice table, dork. But yeah, I'm fond of gallium because I was always fascinated by the idea that you could have a metal and like hold it in your hand and have it kind of melt. And metal, of course, can, all metals can melt, I believe. Yeah. It's really cool. I just love, love those kinds of things where it's like, wow, this is, it's butter, but it's also metal. So it's butter for robots.

Right. For robot bread, robot toast. For robot bread. That's so cute. I'd love to see a robot spreading some gallium on like some aluminum toast. Yeah, I'm imagining them opening a compartment in their middle to toast bread, you know, like a slot toaster. Putting it in their mouth and it goes back into their compartment. Yeah.

They just want to be human so bad, you know. I want to enjoy toast. And yeah, and Mendeleev, he, you know, was alive and a person for testing out his periodic table. And he took a lot of public personal pride in how effectively the table predicted elements. And there was a thing with this gallium discovery where its discoverers said, hey, we also checked the density of gallium. It's not that close to what the periodic table predicts. And then Mendeleev publicly challenged them to get a purer sample and try it again.

And he was right. They got a purer sample and it was a lot closer to the density he predicted. Then also in 1879, scientists discovered scandium. In 1886, scientists discovered germanium. Wait, scandium? Yes, named after Scandinavia. Scandinavia, yeah. Yeah. Germanium, let me guess, named after Finland. Some Prussians are so mad right now.

Oh, geez. Why is there no Italian? Come on, Italy. I feel like every joke answer would be a mean stereotype about Italians. I don't know. They love their pasta, don't they, folks? Or they're too generous. They named it after, they named it Germanium just to be nice to their neighbors. You know what I mean? That'd be sweet. Yeah. In a weird way. But those also fit Mendeleev's

table. And then Mendeleev did triumphant announcements that those discoveries were, quote, reinforcers of the periodic law. He was just going around Europe being like, look at me. I can call them all. I predict them all. It's amazing. Sounds like he's gotten mad with power. A little bit, yeah.

A little Judge Dredd of the science nerds. So that's one of the two processes leading to neon is this periodic table system. And then the other is that measurements of air are weird if you don't know about the noble gases. ratio of nitrogen and oxygen, which were both elements discovered in the 1700s and well-known. But his calculations weren't quite right. And he would later learn it's because there were noble gases in there affecting the ratio. So how do you weigh air? How were they doing these experiments on air? Did you just sort of like bundle it up with your hands and kind of try to move it on a scale. I assume that there is a method of weighing and measuring air. There's kind of a few, depending on what people are trying to find.

And it's mega complicated. But the way to get neon out of air is a system called fractional distillation, which is where you cool it down to a liquid and then boil back out the parts bit by bit because they have different boiling points. And so if you want to pull neon out of air, you need to fractionally distill thousands of pounds of air to get one pound of neon. Rayleigh said, hey, I think there's something else in air. He did further experiments on the density of nitrogen, also got weird results. And then a fellow scientist in London, the Scottish scientist William Ramsey, heard about Lord Rayleigh's results, contacted him, and then they both worked on the theory that there was another heavier gas in air.

And as they worked on it in 1894, they found the element argon, which is more plentiful in air than neon. That's why they found argon first. Is it smaller than neon as well? And it's bigger. It's atomic number 18 versus neon being 10. So there's more argon and it's heavier that helped them find it first. Oh, that's interesting. So they, in 1894, announced argon. Immediately, Mendeleev starts in letters and also publicly criticizing them and saying this is probably heavy nitrogen. One key source for this episode is an amazing book. It's called Periodic Tales, A Cultural History of the Elements from Arsenic to Zinc. It's by science writer Hugh Aldersey-Williams. Also, thank you, friend of the show, Daniel Peet,

for the tip on that book. But Aldersey- calls the letters between Mendeleev and William Ramsey, quote, tetchy. And that they were not just disagreeing. They were like arguing and kind of mad at each other. Just like, like, check your, check your air again, four eyes. Why are you calling me four eyes, four eyes? Is that even a Russian expression? And he mails it.

And then the guy mails back, yes. Or da, I guess in Russian. But yeah. But yeah. And then kind of ironically to me, Mendeleev is saying, Argon doesn't fit my periodic table. table. And then Ramsey and another colleague, Morris Travers, prove that it fits by finding the whole rest of the family in a way really guided by periodic table logic. Now that they had this one element established, they could say, okay, what's similar to it? What are the other slots on the table? Based on that, what will we find? And within five years they found four more chemical elements they found helium in 1895

and then just in the year 1898 they found neon and krypton and xenon so when they first found helium was one of the first things they did like inhale and be like we have made a wonderful discovery this has got to change the world, these guys are the inventors of comedy. It's pretty exciting to share that with folks. And balloons. And balloons. Yeah, and legitimately, they had a really exciting experience discovering neon. Because when Ramsey and Travers successfully created a sample of pure neon,

the way of confirming it was running it through a machine called an atomic spectrometer. The way that device works is it excites whatever's in there with electricity. And so when they tested neon, they got a reddish orange glow where they were like, wow. And you know, also this leads to the lights. They found some of the most fun elements, it sounds like. So now we get balloons and neon lights. Yeah. And then even the name Krypton, which means hidden, is also just cool. The name Xenon means stranger. These are all Greek-based names. And yeah, and then Ramsey's work both ended those criticisms from Mendeleev and totally fit his table. I think if he just went along with it, it would have been fine. The next step from Mendeleev was to welcome all the noble gases.

They put them in a whole new column on the far right side of the table where they are today. If you want to pull out a periodic table, we're talking about the whole column on the right side. This is sort of like when nerds argue about canon for something like Star Wars, and then they're arguing with some author of some Star Wars story, and then in the end, it turns out that they were right, and that guy was like, okay, you're right, that does actually fit canonically in the timeline or something, except with elements. So the more things change, the more they stay the same. Nerds are going to keep having their weird petty arguments, but then in the end come up with a new fan fiction of elements.

Yeah, truly. They could just agree the whole time. They could have just agreed and it would have been fine but they didn't i mean but then how is what is his name medley of gonna go on to his message board uh and complain about about these these guys you know when i learned a little bit more about george rr martin i was really surprised to learn how much he blogs and message boards especially about the new york jets football team you just don't think of a guy like that spending time like that, but they do. They're human. He's a nerd. He has to be on the message boards. Otherwise, how will people know he's right? Come on, Alex. Yeah. I say this as a nerd who needs other people to understand that I'm right on my message boards.

Yeah. These guys invented comedy and the internet. It was a lot of astounding achievements. And this also, this argument was sort of the main damaging thing to Mendeleev's reputation. Like in his time, he was not totally celebrated after this fight. And Hugh Aldersey Williams says it's the main reason Mendeleev failed to win a Nobel Prize, despite multiple nominations. Just because he was a little touchy? Yeah, that he failed to predict the noble gases and was real public about it and argumentative about it.

People said, oh, well, he can't be that smart then. Oh, poor guy. He was just a little bit argumentative. I feel like you shouldn't get your Nobel Prize. I mean, I guess it is a Nobel Prize. So if you don't discover the Nobel gases, that's a pretty bad look. I looked up the announcement speech for William Ramsey getting a Nobel Prize in 1904, And nobody made that joke. I'm really bummed. It seems it's right there. Nerds. Yeah, and Lord Rayleigh also got a Nobel Prize.

They were both really celebrated for this noble gases discovery that they co-worked on together. Because it was huge news worldwide that like, hey, a ton of new elements just appeared on the side of the table. New elements just dropped. Yeah. Come on, Lord Rayleigh. Like you couldn't have stood up there and be like, I'm a noble getting a Nobel for my noble gases. Yeah. Am I right or am I right?

Hang on. Am I right or am I right? Hey, helium. Balloons, guys. Great discovery. Yeah. And then the Swedes running the prizes are just sitting there with a table of scandium being boring like what about scandium more talk about scandium right

right no excitement for scandium you see it yes let's look at the scandium together odorless it has color and odor it's a metal and everybody's just doing helium bits on the other side of the room It has color and odor. It's a metal. Eh? Eh? And everybody's just doing helium bits on the other side of the room. But yeah, that is the origin, essentially, of neon. It's always existed and been in the air around us. But 1898, an argument is resolved and the periodic table is sort of finished. It was a real big step to getting a more complete table by working that out.

Nice. Thank you, nerds, for being petty and argumentative. Yeah. And they were famous about this. Like, they get Nobel Prizes in 1904, Rayleigh and Ramsey. These gases are big news worldwide. And also, like we said, from jump, they noticed, hey, you can excite neon with electricity and get a glow. So the next number, back to the numbers, is 1910.

Just 12 years later, 1910, that's when French engineer and chemist Georges Claude debuted the first neon sign at an art show in Paris. debuted the first neon sign at an art show in Paris. Did they call it French Lights or something, given their track record of naming things after France? Gali Lights, am I right? Hey, too Latin, doesn't work. No, they pretty much called it Neon Lights because these were very impressive. Claude built 40-foot-tall tubes of glass

containing the gas neon, and these giant tubes of the gas neon went electrified, glowed a bright reddish-orange color, blew people away. I don't think I ever have seen, like, a 40-foot-tall neon tube. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, they basically immediately did this technology well. Yeah. As soon as they knew what neon was, they said, great, science for commerce.

Let's go. Boom, boom, boom. Yeah. When you say excite the gas with electricity, what are you doing exactly? Like rubbing your socks on a carpet and touching it? Like how is the, what exactly are you doing inside the tube? Yeah, this ties in well with the recent batteries episode, because we talked about silly light in jars and stuff where people were just trying to hold static electricity in a place.

But 1910, that was late enough in technology time that it dovetailed well with electric current. So AC or DC current, you run that into a machine that excites the tube and there you go. Cool. So it was pretty straightforward given the electrical technology they had also recently put together. Right. Where they were shocking dead frogs and saying, look at it go. Right. That was like 100 years before.

So they were pretty good on electricity. They teamed it up with neon and partied. So now our signs in front of stores weren't frogs dead frogs getting shocked but beautiful lights right like a neon light little can can instead of a horrific frog display doing that spells out like bar and it's just like a bunch of dead frogs and the french were like we're drinking in the street instead. Forget it. And then they invented sidewalk culture. It all worked out.

Yeah. But yeah, so basically, immediately, they got neon lights going. This guy, George Claude, built a very lucrative business doing it. He sold his first sign to a Paris barbershop in 1912. first sign to a Paris barbershop in 1912. And he also did some patents, trade secrecy, Thomas Edison business sort of stuff to monopolize neon sign technology until the early 1920s and make a huge fortune. You can't monopolize an element and glass tubes. Come on. Yeah, that's essentially what everyone else said and gradually, gradually took over also doing that business. But early on, he did some Thomas Edison stuff where there are stories of Edison saying, I invented movies and all movies make me money. And people said, not for long. We're not going to do that.

I own the air. I call it Thomas, Thomas air. I call it Thomas Thomas Air Right they were like any of us can pull neon out of air Through fractional distillation We don't need to pay you every time we do that That's silly And also very early in this technology They found ways to make different colors

Which brings us into yet another quick takeaway This is full of takeaways Takeaway number three. Neon lights often don't involve the element neon specifically. Is it other elements? a bright reddish orange glow. And so, you know, today there are even LED lights that imitate this whole setup, but very early in the process, they figured out that other gases and chemicals can get you other colors.

Like argon and freon and shmeon. The first one, argon. Yeah, yeah. Shmeon. The first one, Argon. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, apparently Argon, especially mixed with a little bit of mercury. It doesn't have to just be gases, but that gets you a blue glow.

It's very poisonous, obviously, but don't drink it and just look at it, you know? I'm going to shotgun that tube of mercury Argon like a pixie stick. No. It's blue raspberry flavor, right? No, it's not. It's not. Shotgun that tube of mercury argon like a pixie stick. It's blue raspberry flavor, right? No, it's not. It's not. My brain will tell me that after it gets eaten away by mercury. But yeah, and they figured out that the noble gas xenon can give you a purplish glow. Helium can do more of a pinkish red. Also, light makers figured out that

if you coat the glass tube in various chemicals, such as phosphors, that can give you other different color schemes. And so the neon lights are called neon because of this historical story where the very first ones were reddish orange tubes of actual neon. But now that's a catch-all term for all this kind of signage with various chemicals. So when I was five years old and playing that video game, and everyone was like, ah, playing video games will never help you in life, it did. It taught me about putting different elements in glass tubes, and now here I am on a podcast.

So play video games, kids. It's the best way to learn. Yeah. Forget those books. It's the games Age of Empires and Civilization. That's history, baby. That's it. Plus, you get to look at the leaders talking all funny and having little voices and stuff.

Teaches you about phalanxes. I don't know. I've never played those games. I was always a pacifist. It sounds like you have because the phalanx is way overpowered in Age of Empires I. It needs to be nerfed, and everyone knows this. I hear you can use chariot archers with the Scythians, but that's not the point. Funnily, speaking of history, that is the point in history where we get neon lights,

the 1910s and very next number here is 1923. Cause 1923 is when the United States got its first neon sign. Was it a big cowboy? It was not, but that comes later. This technology sort of being monopolized by one French guy means that the first American neon sign was made in France and shipped here. It was a neon sign for a Packard car dealership in California. Made in 1923. We took a lot of things from France. Statue of Liberty. Democracy.

French fries. Bread. Well, sort of, yeah. The little mustaches. The phrase, hon, hon, hon, imported from our wonderful friends across the sea. I do love to say a good hon, hon, hon. Right. Before France, we didn't know how to say that at all.

We would just try to be funny and not have a phrase with a funky accent for it. There was no laughter because we couldn't say, but that beginning global spread of neon signs sets up the rise and fall of that as a thing. And we've done three whole takeaways in a ton of numbers. So we're going to take a quick break, then get into the birth and death and rebirth of Neon Signage. This week, like every week, Secretly Incredibly Fascinating is brought to you by members of Maximum Fun. Members of Maximum Fun are the reason that this employee-owned network of artist-owned podcasts can exist. That's the only reason. Additionally, this week, we're stretching

that support out with extra support from HelloFresh. HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit, and there's a reason for that. It's awesome. And the specifics of that awesomeness involve farm-fresh pre-portioned ingredients. They deliver right to your doorstep. They save you trips to the grocery store. And you get to enjoy new recipes, maybe new techniques for cooking. I've found HelloFresh to be that perfect balance of plenty of instructions, plenty of support as I figure out a new recipe. And I'm still definitely cooking and putting food onto the table from this wonderful

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I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney.

I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. We're back with more numbers to go. And the next number is 1988.

That is the approximate year when a coffee shop in Los Angeles named Googees got demolished. Googees. Googees. Googees. Goo-gees. Goo-gees. And that coffee shop lent its name to an entire architectural style called Goo-gee, named after it. Goo-gee. Okay.

Yeah, and I'll link examples of it because it's very visual, but also that's the point. It's something that you might just think of as vintage stuff, especially in the western U.S. Smithsonian Magazine says, quote, it's a style built on exaggeration, on dramatic angles, on plastic and steel and neon and wide eyed technological optimism. Like an In-N-Out or a Sonic drive through, right? Yeah, big time. But it's called Gucci's, though.

Yeah, but it's named after this one coffee shop. And the style really took off in the 1940s, 1950s. But then it declined pretty quickly to the point where it wasn't really being built anymore starting in the 1970s. And they demolished that inspirational coffee shop, which had these angles and stuff in the 80s. That location is now a Trader Joe's and a movie theater and a few little shops. Of course it is. Trader Joe's just plastering the world because we love their delicious dips and frozen samosas. And we're just going to become a Trader Joe's tyranny.

Tyranny of the really good frozen samosas. Everyone is sounding off in their heads with their favorite snack there, minus the ink and corn. A lot of people like the dark chocolate peanut butter cups. You know, anyway, it's a great story. That's how they get us. Like, they lure us in with really good tasting snacks. And the next thing you know, they're bulldozing all of our classic buildings and creating

new Trader Joe's. That's right. thing you know they're bulldozing all of our classic buildings and creating new trader joes that's right they need to become a sponsor if they want us to stop talking about the demolitions so trader joes like they could just if they just give me a box of free for free joe joes that's my price to sell out that's it that's all it all it takes. They're so good. But demolitions, focus on the demolitions. I'll become like wildly, wildly pro-capitalist if you give me a free box of JoJo's. And again, I'll link it because I feel like it's hard to describe, but it's huge eye-catching signs that are often cartoony shapes, like, you know, like a giant cartoony coffee cup is a Gucci sign for a coffee shop. It's like the old Las Vegas.

Yeah, that's right. This all fits together because one of the big reasons for the decline of Gucci is that it had a lot of neon lighting and in general, neon lighting and signage declined, especially starting in the 1970s. Were too many people breaking them open like pixie sticks and huffing the argan? Too delicious. But we'll get into why with takeaway number four. Since the 1970s, neon signage has been going extinct, and in the process, it's gained a

new status as fine art. So much of it was built for commerce in a non-art way that partly because of the whole trajectory of modern art, but also because of neon's new rarity, the remaining stuff has become valued as artistic and historic. Yeah. You know, as soon as we start getting like commercially available good holograms, that's going to be everywhere. It's going to be like McDonald's, just like a rotating burger. You know, it's kind of have a gap now between technologies, between neon and the next big thing, I guess, to advertise stores. I guess LED screens, like big LED screens. Like in New York, you have those big LED screens and they're like high definition screens and you see stuff on them. And that's the new advertisement. It's exactly right. Yeah. Because the one killer advantage of LED is that it glows in daytime too. Like neon doesn't really look glowy in daytime. It just looks like tubes.

And so. Yeah. What's wrong with a good tube? We're essentially tubes with arms and legs. That's right. The Internet is a series of tubes. I'm pro tube. Honestly. Existence is tubes.

Name a thing that's not a tube. Go on. Try it. We start having a bundle of arguments about things not being tubes. And then we're shamed by. Donut, short tube. Square, square tube. That's right. Brick, rectangle tube. We're right. Heavy tube. There's a few sources here for the decline of neon. It's stuff from National Geographic and The Atlantic and The Guardian.

neon. It's stuff from National Geographic and The Atlantic and The Guardian. The general story is that in the 1970s, there's a little bit of a death spiral for neon signage. It's a vicious circle of neon gets built up in the 1920s to the 1950s. When it needed repair or replacement, it was seen as less of a new and modern thing seen as not quite worth it. According to J. Eric Linksweiler, president of the board at the Los Angeles Museum of Neon Art, neon signage was seen as, quote, grandpa's technology as early as the 1960s. Then as neon fell apart, its reputation became kind of associated with oldness and disrepair, which starts a vicious circle. Like people let neon fall apart, which makes them like neon less, which means they let neon fall apart more, which means they like it even less. And from there, it kind of collapses. Right. And even if you are sort of a staunch pro-neon person, I'm sure at that point it's really hard to find like a neon repairman because they don't get business elsewhere. So then you can only find the very rare neon artisans out there. And if you have like a little bar, you're not going to be able to afford a neon artisan. And so

I'm guessing now it's only something like the super wealthy can have is neon. That's exactly right. Yeah. The very specific technical profession of a neon craftsman, somebody who makes and repairs neon lights. Less work, so less jobs. So less work, so less jobs. And on and on. And The Guardian interviewed Wu Qikai in the city of Hong Kong.

He's described as one of the last neon light craftsmen in Hong Kong. the city of Hong Kong. He's described as one of the last neon light craftsmen in Hong Kong. In 2018, he said his workshop revenue had dropped 80% over the last 25 years and that he was going to need to close soon. The small scale stuff that was left to do wasn't going to support it. Oh, that's really sad. I don't know why. I mean, it's not like I love neon so much, but I do kind of, I like that people are skilled at cool things. Like when someone has an art form and they're good at it and they make a cool thing, you know, I want them to be able to keep doing that. Especially if it's, you know, I'm hoping you're not about to tell me that like neon

signs kill baby dolphins or something. Cause you know. In a roundabout way, that was a misconception that hurt neon signage as well. In the 1970s, people only somewhat correctly decided neon signs are energy inefficient and bad for the environment. It turns out they do take some energy, but the efficiency of LED is a little overstated. A lot of times LED gets described by the energy rating when it's super dim, like the dimmest setting where it's turned on. And if you actually use it at the brightness people use it, it's not

that much more efficient than neon. For me, it's not a real LED light unless I can kind of feel my eyeballs warming up. Right. If I'm able to sleep that night, it wasn't turned on. You know what I mean? Come on. If it has not destroyed my melatonin production entirely and made me a creature of the day and night, then that's not real LED light. night, then it's not, then that's not real LED light. But this joke, it kind of also became a neon criticism that the light pollution, the super joke version is the Seinfeld episode where the Kenny Rogers roaster's sign turns Kramer's whole apartment red and no one can sleep in there. But like energy and light pollution became a criticism of neon and in the 1970s when there was an energy crisis some cities like san diego and vancouver banned neon like either the construction of it or or required it to start to be taken down i mean i'm all for uh reducing light

pollution but i feel like we still have it even even though we got rid of neon. It's still a problem. And then like, apparently those cities did rescind those bans, but the damage was done. Like this overall spiral of neon starting to go away. It especially hit hard in Hong Kong. Apparently back in the 1900s, when Hong Kong was a British colony and capitalist, neon filled the city in the 1950s. It was a big eye catcher for, you know, the high density pedestrian places in Hong Kong. The Guardian interviewed Brian Kwok, who is an assistant professor of the School of Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He says neon is, quote, an endangered species in the city.

Apparently, about 90% of the main neon lights in Hong Kong have been taken down in the last 20 years, partly because of new laws in 2011 requiring neon signs to be replaced with smaller versions or removed completely. And so the city's been taking down thousands of neon lights, you know, for better or worse. Like maybe there's less light pollution, maybe it's better for energy, but at some point you're removing some history as well. Yeah. It seems kind of, I don't know. I, I, I am in favor of reducing light pollution. I think that's good, but I feel like, I don't know if getting rid of neon is gonna do it right. Like there's still a ton of light pollution. It seems like just basically saying like, hey,

turn your lights off after 11 people, you know, would be better. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not a light scientist or a politician. I can be if you want me to though. Hey, because that's politics, baby. You just tape an ad where you're wearing a flannel shirt on a farm because it's somehow american you're looking at the teleprompter like okay what do i think about neon what do people want it's they're trying to take our neon uh and then just like cocking a neon gun the very end of the ad is you drinking a little bit of it. Like, I'm sorry. I found some sources just lyrically describing the 1900s as the neon century. Like, yeah,

it was this whole time period of people putting it up. But for this nesting set of reasons, people didn't want to spend the money or hire the people to keep it going. It's pretty, though. I mean, I think like in people's concept of sort of a cyberpunk future is always full of neon lights and stuff. So I think that there's a real nostalgia for these neon lights. Yeah. And oddly, it's especially a dystopian future thing because it's both nostalgic and also people have real life experiences of seeing run down neon. And so in media like Blade Runner, which came out in 1982, that was a time of real life neon sign decay. And so it made sense as a stylish lighting for this horrible version of L.A. in the near future. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is sort of a Hollywood trope, right? Sort of the buzzing neon light at like some gas station in the middle of nowhere.

And then you go there and then you get like axe murdered by cannibals or something. Yeah. Funny enough, speaking of the middle of nowhere, there's one last last takeaway for the main show here. I thought you were going to say speaking of the middle of nowhere there's one last last takeaway for the main show here i thought you're gonna say speaking of cannibals oh hard turn podcast is taking a hard turn yeah last last takeaway for this loaded main show takeaway number five las vegas nevada had neon signs before it officially had gambling. So you come for the neon and you stay for the losing your money. Yeah, like when Las Vegas was truly tiny and had only really just been incorporated the decade before they installed their first neon signage. And it's truly one of the most neon cities in the world.

Yeah, I mean, like that kind of tracks with sort of our cultural conception of it, this glowing little oasis in the middle of the desert. Like we said, the first U.S. neon signage was 1923. Las Vegas put up its first neon sign in 1929. They put it up at a business called the Oasis Cafe, then more neon at the Las Vegas Club in 1930. Maybe there was gambling going on, but legally Nevada didn't repeal their statewide gambling ban until 1931. And so then casinos sprout up and those build neon too. But Las Vegas is such a neon city that when it only had a population of about 5,000 people, they were putting up neon signage that was pretty rare outside of New York City and Paris at the time. of being over the top and bright and festive.

And I'm personally not like a huge fan of casinos, just it feels depressing in there. I don't know. But like, I remember when I went to Las Vegas, I was a little disappointed because I kind of had this concept of what it would look like with sort of neon lights and like the old gambling machines where you'd like pull the handle. And now it's just sort of all screens, all like LED screens and stuff.

And to me, that's just sort of, I don't know. It's a little depressing. I had the same experience with video slots. Yeah. Movies told me it's cooler, I guess. But people love them. Like I went for my friend's like bachelor party and he mainly wanted to go to the e-sports arena. We didn't do anything crazy, but he also wanted to play one specific video slot. And I didn't know they existed, really. I was like, oh, OK, cool. It's just a screen. Great. It's just like a giant iPhone game that takes your money. And it just, it's like you push a button.

There's a bunch of like random animations that happen on the screen, like cats doing the can-can. And then they're like, oops, you lost your money. Bye. Meow, meow, meow. And then it's like, oh, okay. The old style gambling machines, even though, I mean, those were also highly addictive, but I think now just like the automation of everything where someone can literally just kind of sit in front of a screen and almost do nothing for hours on end.

It's just, I mean, I feel like I just kind of described myself playing a legend of Zelda tears of the kingdom, but in that case, I'm saving the princess, so I'm okay. Yeah, and it's 60 bucks one time, and then you get to just play it forever. There you go. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, and the past and present of slots, it's kind of this neon thing, too, and it all depended on electricity. If people have heard the past concrete show and its bonus show about the Hoover Dam,

the thing that really built Vegas was in the 1930s. The Hoover Dam is being constructed nearby. So then there's both human workers looking for entertainment and a huge electricity source to turn on the gaming machines and the neon lights. And you get this neon city out in the desert. That's amazing. And probably the most representative symbol of that neon today is a cowboy sign. There we go.

His name is Vegas Vic. He was built in 1951. I knew there was a cowboy guy and he's neon. Yeah. He's like kind of got this lackadaisical look about him. Very cowboy casual. He does. He's on Fremont Street and he is sort of independent of specific casinos now.

He's owned by a company called Schiff Enterprises. But the thing is, Vegas has so much neon and is such a neon city that a lot of it is now the equivalent of historically marked. And this is kind of a breaking story. In April 2023, the city of Las Vegas threatened to fine the owners of Vegas Vic for turning him off. They were not running the sign. They were not running the sign. And they said that by law, in order to still be up, Vegas Vic needed to be turned on from an hour before dusk to an hour after dawn. In order to be historic neon in Vegas, you need to be turned on at nighttime. So this is like opposite town, like other cities are saying, take down your neon, turn off your neon. But here they're saying, keep on your neon all night or we're going to put you in Vegas jail. Yeah, basically. I'll link reports from KVVU local news, Las Vegas, because Schiff Enterprises in May of 2023 said, okay, we'll turn it on. And they found out,

they found out only about a quarter of the sign worked, and they've now hired a company in Utah to refurbish, replace, redo the tubes. According to that company, quote, the good news is at 72 years of age, the sign is absolutely repairable. All right. So Vegas Vic's still, you know, in good shape. He just needs some more tubes, just like humans. Like you get to a certain age and it's like, you're all right. We just need to insert some new tubes in you. Yeah.

And Vic is also one of the more freestanding forms of historic neon now. The city of Vegas also spent a couple million dollars over the last few years restoring a set of historic hotel and motel neon signs. And they tried to do a corridor of those leading to the City of Las Vegas Museum of Neon. And Vegas, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia are a few of the cities in the U.S. with museums of neon now. It's sort of like how pop art discovered that you could put up pictures of commercial things like Campbell's soup cans and that's art. Neon has progressed to become art now by being historic and vintage commercial stuff. It's kind of impossible to separate our nostalgia or our art from commercial things like, you know, with the Campbell's soup or with the neon.

commercial things like, you know, with the Campbell's soup or with the neon, like, yeah, these are all very commercial things, but our, our entire culture is just so wrapped up in commerciality, especially, you know, like at around the time that neon was, you know, thriving. So yeah, I mean, of course we're going to be nostalgic for that and kind of see that now as, as a form of art. Totally. Like even Vegas Vic specifically exists to trick you into using slot machines, but I like him a lot anyway. I don't really like slot machines at all. And I like Vic a whole bunch. Yeah, no, I feel similarly. I feel a little bit Stockholm syndrome because, you know, generally I don't like how commercialized things have been. I felt really icky being in Las Vegas. But then I also really like I get good vibes from seeing this neon cowboy.

So I feel like that kind of thing, right? Like the classic Vegas, the old like I really wanted to play like an old slot machine, the one where you pull the thingy and you get the cherries and so on. And so there's this big nostalgia grip on me, I think, that I still feel regardless of, you know, being a little more askance at the actual... Like, everything feels like it is a commercial interaction, and that's a little depressing,

but I'm also a sucker for neon cowboys. Yeah, he looks so happy up there. He's cool. We all like the science, I think. It's just fun. It's chemicals and gases and a lot of it's falling apart, but a lot of it's getting saved

because we just like it. Folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, you are breathing in neon right now. Takeaway number one, you are breathing in neon right now. Takeaway number two, the discovery of neon and argon and the other noble gases almost broke the periodic table. Takeaway number three, neon lights often do not involve the element neon. Takeaway number four, since the 1970s, neon signage has been going extinct,

and in the process, it's gained a new status as fine art. And takeaway number five, Las Vegas, Nevada had neon signs before it officially had gambling. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show at MaximumFun.org, members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is Soviet neon and post-Soviet neon. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 12 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It's special audio. It's just for members. Thank you for being somebody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things? check out our research sources

on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include the British Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Physical Society, and Ohio State University. Also an amazing book called Periodic Tales, A Cultural History of the Elements from Arsenic to Zinc that is by science writer Hugh Aldersey Williams. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. Also, we just had a lot of Las Vegas stories. That city is built on the traditional lands of the Neue Sogobia people and thewuwi people and the Chemehuevi people.

For example, visit chemehuevi.org, which we'll have linked for information about those folks doing language classes, garden walks, and other community events. They also just did a Nwuwi Days celebration, June 2nd and 3rd. So, very much going on, very much still a thing. That kind of acknowledgement feels worth doing on each episode. And hey, join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There's a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode right here on the Discord. And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode

88. Episode 88 is about the topic of license plates. Fun fact, the U.S. state license plates in Delaware count up from a plate with just the number one on it, and then two and three and so on, and that number one plate is reserved for the car of Delaware's governor. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals and science and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members.

And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.