Led Signs
LED signs are the modern day selling gimmick. In the olden days also signs were used by the Egyptians and the Greeks for advertising purposes. So did the Romans. They cleaned surfaces of the walls and made inscriptions on the wall for advertising their products. Traders used some form of a sign that was related to their product, so that the illiterate public could relate the real item to the advertised item. More often than not the public returned with the pamphlet of the item advertised and asked for the product. This was how effective signs were.
Some of the famous signs of the medieval times were "A bush mounted before a tavern"; this indicated the availability of wine in the premises. Three golden balls indicated a pawnbroker located there. A red and white stripe indicated a barber.
Talking about its inclusion in the dictionary, sign was a word that was entered in the English language quite late. In the year 1225 the word sign meant "a gesture or a motion". The end of the thirteenth century, sign meant the sign of a cross or any other indication on a banner or a shield.
The development of sign went through a lot more motions. It was a custom and a necessity for the English merchants to label their own establishments with their own sign's. This was required by France too. This was the custom of the sixteenth century. After another hundred years, France and London passed a law stating that, no trader or establishment was permitted to hang their signs on a stanchion other than the inns. All other establishments of business could hang their signs on the wall mounted flat from the face of their building.
This tradition of hanging signs from the face of the building stood the test of time in the Gascony and Spain's Basque country. Here the sign hanged displayed the name of the owner of the house / establishment or at the least carried the date of construction of the building.
Advertisement was revolutionized with the advent of the printing press. Hand bills and cards carried the sign of the advertised product. With it came the clamor for space to post the bills.
When the generators were invented, electrical sign boards came into existence. In 1910, a French scientist Georges Claude invented the neon bulb, which was the pioneer in the sign boards that you see today. In about a decade signs have developed to colored lights / lamps / tubes. Tubes could be bent in to any required shape to device the sign.
Today LED signs are used in hoardings and advertisements. The advantages of LED signs are a many. There is a considerable saving in terms of power. It has a low maintenance cost, i. e. the average life of a LED bulb is something 100,000 hrs. A neon bulb has a life expectancy of only 10,000 hrs. Environmental pollution is another major factor, neon bulbs pollute the nature, and they contain either mercury or argon, both of which are pollutants in the atmosphere.