colors they emitted were characteristics of the gases within. They were unsuitable for general lighting, as the pressure of the gas inside typically declined with use. The direct predecessor of neon tube lighting was the Moore tube, which used nitrogen or carbon dioxide as the luminous gas and a patented mechanism for maintaining pressure. Moore tubes were sold for commercial lighting for a number of years in the early 1900s.

The discovery of neon in 1898 by British scientists William Ramsay