updated May 29, 2023
In the last couple years of the 19th century, monoatomic (or inert) gases were discovered: helium, argon, krypton, xenon, and neon. Of these atmospheric gases, it was soon learned that neon best permitted the ready passage of an electric current. In 1910, a French inventor, one Georges Claude, attached an electrode to a glass tube full of neon gas -- et voila! A jewel-like bright-red shimmering glow materialized. An exciting new form of illumination had been invented.
Neon (and the different colors its fellow gases produced) immediately captivated Parisian sign-makers. In 1923, a visiting automobile dewaler from Los Angeles ordered a custom neon sign that spelled out "Packard" in bright blue letters with orange edging. Installed on Wilshire Boulevard, it caused a nationwide sensation.
Only six years later, a forward-looking lighting businessman from Ogden, Utah, Thomas Young, placed a neon sign in the window of the Oasis Club on Fremont Street, thereby establishing the inseparability of neon, Las Vegas, and the Young Electric Sign Company.
The 1940s and '50s were the Golden Age of Neon in America. Thanks to its decorative and advertisting values, neon invaded Vegas with a vengeance. Its artistry benefited enormously from the famous local tradition of one-upmanship, inspired by the fierce competition among the major hotel-casinos.
The old Boulder Club downtown featured YESCO's first prominent neon creation in Las Vegas: a freestanding 40-foot-tall sign with vertical letters topping a bright marquee. Almost immediately, the Frontier Club and Sal Sagev Hotel followed suit. The Pioneer Club then introduced the elaborate Vegas Vic sign, which has become the city's most enduring image. But the Golden Nugget took the early prize with a 100-foot-high blindingly bright sign that remained downtown's centerpiece for nearly 50 years.
When Benjamin Siegel opened the fabulous Flamingo in 1946, he abandoned the western motif, which had extended from downtown to the El Rancho Vegas and Last Frontier hotel-casinos on the fledgling Strip. Instead, the Flamingo was fronted by two 80-foot-tall neon highball glasses fizzing with pink champagne, which framed the nondescript boxes of the lowrise motor inn.
The quintessential example of neon providing a false front that made visible the dark, recessed, one-story motel buildings was the Stardust, which opened in 1958. The large colorless building supported the largest sign, at the time, in the world: more than 200 feet long and nearly 30 feet high, with a gleaming Earth turning in a welter of planets, comets, and flaring meteors.
This set the standard for the Las Vegas Strip and helped introduce a new commercial vernacular along suburban "strips" across the country.
For the next 30 years, competition along Las Vegas Boulevard was as intense as the neon itself, effected by a number of commercial artists, set designers, and animators attracted by Las Vegas' laissez-faire sign policies. The Frontier installed the world's tallest sign, at 184 feet, in 1966. Then the Sahara built one 36 feet taller. Then the Hilton held the record for many years with its 262-foot-tall sign.
Neon does not burn out. Undisturbed, a sign can last 30 years or more. Wind and rain, birds, short circuits, and vandalism, however, keep large sign-company spotter and repair crews busy year round.
Neon's popularity, both in Las Vegas and across the country, has diminished since the 1960s and '70s. In Vegas, electronic billboards, also known as message marquees, supplanted static neon signage with increased brightness, versatility, and animation effects; Caesars' 32,000-bulb readerboard was installed in 1984, followed by copy-cat e-billboards up and down the Strip. Also in the mid-1980s, the famous Golden Nugget sign downtown was replaced by an elegant marble-and-brass facade.
The designers of the megaresorts considered neon to be "old Las Vegas," and employed little if any neon around the exteriors. Likewise, avant-garde artists, who've rediscovered the gas, have tried to separate the art form from the gaudy glow of Fremont Street.
Nevertheless, the Strip remains the undisputed brightest stretch of road in the world. And maybe neon can be neon without Las Vegas, but Las Vegas could never be Las Vegas without neon.