It was for photographs of New York, such as these taken for LIFE magazine, that Andreas Feininger (1906-1999) attained fame. A trained architect, Feininger turned to photography at age 30. In 1939, he emigrated from Europe to New York, where he made photography his career.

Just three decades earlier, a large-scale neon light was switched on in front of the public for the very first time when Georges Claude — aka "the Edison of France" — demonstrated his invention at the Paris Motor show in December 1910.

Claude's company was creating huge amounts of neon as a waste product of its core business, liquefying air, and it was this supply of neon that kicked off the age of the neon sign. With his patents, Claude had a monopoly on neon sign production.

The neon signs might have been made purely for advertising. A variety of colors could be made to light tubes that were bent into any and every shape, including letters and numbers. In 1913, three years after the Motor Show a huge Cinzano sign was on display in Paris, and in 1923, Claude sold two neon signs to an LA car dealership — the first American neon signs. (They said "Packard.")

Licensing smaller manufacturers to create neon signs in specific geographic territories, Claude's neon sign company took a percentage of the entire business, valued at $16.9 million by 1931. A year later, his patent expired. By 1940, almost 2,000 small workshops were crafting neon signs in the U.S.

Douglas Leigh, the architect of the world-famous Times Square displays, went far beyond neon, incorporating animation, sound, fog and smells. A steaming coffee pot, a Camel cigarette sign that blew smoke rings and a blinking penguin were some of his most memorable creations.



WWII saw a decrease in the numbers of signs produced, and New York's lights were dimmed to save fuel. But, after the war, New York's Egani Institute received government funding to give ex-soldiers specialist training in the manufacture of neon signs.