I attended the online (it’s 2020, and we are all working on developing a case of zoom fatigue) Neon Speaks symposium the last two weekends and in one of the sessions, the subject of “war glass” was brought up. This is purportedly neon glass tubing that was made during the war by recycling Coca-Cola (or similar) bottles. No one had really heard of this before, and one panelist asked if I knew about it since my circles revolve in such odd orbits of things. It turns out I had in fact heard of this before, having been told of it early in my neon journey during the 1980’s. However, I had not heard of it again and had long ago filed it away as one of those sign shop stories that was more myth than truth. But the question and subsequent discussion after the session prompted me to give it more thought and trace it a bit if possible.
Those of us who were discussing it after the session (Michael Flechtner, Dydia DeLyser, Paul Greenstein, and Kate Widdows) were pretty much in agreement that it was unlikely but interesting.
The main reasons to reject the idea are as follows: First and foremost, “there’s a war on!” This was an oft remarked statement for all manner of things that had been upended in life during that period. Much as a pandemic has altered things today. By the spring of 1942, most civilian products were either no longer being manufactured or were rationed. While glass in and of itself was not restricted, the energy, labor, and factory capacity to convert it into end products was tightly controlled. If something wasn’t necessary, it usually didn’t get made. Glass tubing blanks were produced, but they were in sizes and types used in lamp and vacuum tube manufacture or for research laboratories and such, not for the neon spectaculars of the prewar period. And besides, most of those signs were darkened for the duration due to blackout regulations–especially in coastal regions. So any residual demand or need would have been easily covered by the use of prewar material stocks.–If anyone was there to do the work-as most of the available labor who could do this work was either in the service, working in war plants, or working in some other necessary function. (Caryl Johnson, the prewar tubebender I had written a bit about previously, ended up working for a newspaper during this period.) So those are the war related reasons why this is unlikely.
The next reasons are of an economic and technical aspect…
The bottles in question were the types that you had to pay a deposit for. After the contents were consumed, you could return them and get your money back. Every kid knew this and would actively collect bottles to return….I even turned in a few myself. This was before the age of the throw-away society. These bottles had a value. They went back to the bottling company where they were cleaned, inspected, and refilled to be sold again. As a result, people tried not to break them….and…as a result, they were also heavy and thick and could take a lot of abuse without being broken. Many of these bottles survive to this day and are sought by antique collectors who look for specific bottling plant markings and dates and such. This meant that the available supply of broken bottles to make tubing from would be severely curtailed.
Yeah, but you could have done it, right? Technically yes. But it would be a complex enterprise. Neon tubing needs to be as consistent as possible, both dimensionally (diameter, wall thickness) and in its coefficient of expansion. The COE needs to match that of other tubing from different batches and needs to match the glass used in electrodes, or if you made your own (yes, this was a thing that was done, I have some examples and will share about them another day) then, it needed to match that of the lead-in wires used. Otherwise things would crack and leak under vacuum. Meeting this standard can be done. Some small glass art shops have pulled their own tubing for such purposes, but it is not easy. Using a variety of different sorts of unknown raw material glass as feedstock would have made this job even more difficult if not downright impossible. I won’t say no one ever did it….but after the time, trouble, expense, etc….they probably didn’t do it again.
OK. So while theoretically possible, it probably wasn’t done for a variety of reasons. But. Not completely satisfied, I reached out to the person that Kate had heard the story from, Dave Swofford…I wanted to see what he knew of it or at least compare what he’d been told to what I had heard years ago. I did get in touch with him and found that the story was remarkably similar to what I’d heard and seen. Basically it was a story passed down from a much older neon guy when questioned about a piece of vintage glass on a sign that was clear but had a distinct greenish tint to it. In his case, it was the Baghdad Theatre sign in Portland….in my case, it was an old Mobil Pegasus sign in Texas….but basically the same clear neon tubing with a greenish tinge and a story attached to it.
Could it have been?…well, yeah….but again, unlikely. So what are the other options and why the story? The two best options I can readily come up with to explain this greenish tinged glass (that does exist, as a few of us have seen some) are that either it was some off tinged stuff that just happened to have the right composition to look that way in the right lighting…..or perhaps the composition of it was such that long term UV exposure would cause a slight color shift as it aged. …similar to how the manganese compounds in some other glasses would shift purple over time, although I’ve not really given careful consideration to which elements used would turn green with UV exposure.
As for the story, here’s my best guess….and while following some logic, there are some anecdotal inferences and liberties taken so if you know differently or have some piece of documentation that can prove or disprove any of this, I’d like to hear from you!….anyway, my take on it is this:
When I first began working in neon, one of the glass types we had available was an assortment of colored glass tubing that was called “classic colors”….this stuff was finicky when compared to the usual leaded glass tubing we worked with. If you just threw it in the fire, it would crack or damn near shatter straight away. You had to gently heat it. Then get it hot enough to bend. ….then place it back in a gentle flame to anneal it so it didn’t crack while cooling. I still have the economizer on my ribbon burner set up to give a soft yellow flame in the low setting and the full flame in the high setting. This let me do the gradual warming and after bending annealing all with a simple flip of the lever rather than readjusting mixture valves each time. Laziness and efficiency are interrelated. Anyway, this glass was a soda-lime composition not entirely unlike that which was used in bottles. To me at least, it is not a huge leap for someone in a sign shop to refer to it as soda glass….and soda comes in bottles….and so the connection may have begun this way….add in the widespread knowledge of WWII scrap drives (we recycled all sorts of things long before it became fashionable) and one can almost see how such a story could have gotten a foothold in a few shops and eventually made its way into neon mythology.
Again, that’s my quick take on it…a possible explanation of neon mythology from the guy who does neon archaeology…..if you have some documentation that can prove, disprove, or otherwise shed more light on it, please let me know.
Hello Robert,
Just found your blog. I have been working in neon, tube-bending, since 1987. Love the information in your blog. I have only read a couple so far but am looking forward to the archives.
Keep up the great work,
Todd
As I recall when I was looking into the Neon products company in lima Ohio they continued during World War II though I believe they started making pieces for bomb assemblies. Such a prolific company I imagine also made Neon during that time though not of the Coca-Cola bottle variety. Makes me wonder in general about how much Neon was made during World War II
I’ve wondered this as well, although the answer is almost certainly very little if any. Pretty much anything made would have been produced with leftover prewar stock of things such as gases, electrodes, transformers, etc because the strategic materials were needed elsewhere…and this assumes anyone was available to do the work, given the likelihood of the benders of the time either being drafted or working in specialized plants where their glassworking and high vacuum experience would be of value.
It neither proves nor disproves the use of noviol glass but at least dates the myth: the 1969 book “Using and Understanding Miniature Neon Lamp” by Miller mentions using that glass (along with uranium glass) as a way to color neon light.
Noviol glass is a different animal than the mythological “war glass.” Noviol was marketed by Corning and sold for neon purposes from the early days onward. I have some old Corning ads for noviol tubing from the 30s and 40s. Prior to the wider variety of phosphors that became available after the war, colored tubing such as noviol was one of the primary methods to create different colors beyond the basic red and blue.
As always, thanks for the information. Robert, you also recently posted a pre-war color list that specified the mixing of the different noble gasses to achieve different colors. Until I saw your post, I had never heard of that before. Another way to get colors pre-phosphor.
Yes, I’d heard of it many years ago…but until finding that factory color chart and some old shop notes from another source, I had not seen any proof to back up what I’d been told back then. Ironically, many times those who are not familiar with neon assume that the different colors are made with different gases…and while not common practice, there is validity to it.