Neon and cold cathode lamps dated back over 90 years when Peter Cooper Hewitt of New York developed the first practical lamp utilizing an electrical discharge through mercury vapor. In later years, others developed different discharge tubes. In 1910, George Claude of France applied the inert gases in electrical discharge tubes and thus made possible the great neon industry.

Then, the development of coated glass tubes with phosphorous was introduced followed by the commercial entry of cold cathode lamps became accepted throughout the world. They have been proven by years of usage for all types of applications.

Neon and cold cathode are coated glass tubes with diameters raging from 9 millimeters to 25 millimeters. This type of lighting is one of the most flexible, expressive, and delightful source of light ever invented. It can draw fluid lines, trace a form, or sketch an abstract design. Though the years, it has been known as a source of light for signs, billboards, logos, and art objects.

Individuals involved in the design, fabrication, and installation of neon and cold cathode lighting have created excitement in the design universe by introducing new applications for this type of lighting. Neon and cold cathode lighting has liberated itself from the confines of its traditional illumination. It is now an important medium in architectural lighting, both for illuminating and highlighting. With its unique features, it is easier to brighten up an entire space, may it be a formal setting or an area of extravagance. With neon and cold cathode lighting, things definitely looks better.

Generally, neon and cold cathode are one and the same because both create light by the same principle. The term neon light is more prominent because of the neon effects that the light can produce. The difference is that cold cathode lamps operate on a significantly higher current and has a bigger diameter of tubing. Using cold cathode in place of neon provides higher illumination with the same choice of colors.

It is important to know that while neon and cold cathode lighting share the same characteristics, they are fundamentally different in design, production, and operation. The qualities that make cold cathode the perfect choice for architectural lighting cannot be fully acheived without specialized processing equipments and manufacturing techniques.

After you flick the switch to put on the cold cathode, several things happen. As the switch is closed, electrons are triggered from both ends of the lamp called the cathode and an arc is established between the ends of the closed tube. As the arc is started, drops of mercury inside the lamp is vaporized sustaining the arc. This gives off a blue-green light. The inside surface of the glass envelope is coated with flourescent powder called a phosphor. These phospors have the property of absorbing the ultra-violet energy of the mercury arc and emitting part of this energy in a selected color. The color depends upon the choice of phosphor used.

• HIGHLIGHTING CAPABILITIES can draw attention to a design because of its vibrant colors and excellent quality of illumination. The illumination from neon and cold cathode lighting appears to come from a single, continuous lamp.

• NO DARK SPOTS AND SHADOWS. Tubes can be linked up without gap and creates a uniform light. He spots caused by lamp fixtures can be prevented. This has been widely used for cove applications.

• WIDE RANGE OF COLORS. One can choose the right color for a specific application. Color rendering with the use of lights is possible.

• FLEXIBILITY can be used for both indoor and outdoor. Each tube is custom made so tubes can be formed into complex shapes that can design effects whether circular, oval, square, or any other shape. It only needs a small space for installation giving the designers flexibility in their design.

• LOW HEAT BUILD-UP. This will avoid thermal discoloration on finishing of walls and ceilings. Energy requirement for airconditioning will also be lessened.

• STARTS INSTANTLY. Will start instantly once the power is turned on.

• DIMMABLE can be adapted to most of the advance lighting control system. The illumination level can be dimmed down to 20% of their full light output and can be turned back up to full brightness easily. Some unique expressive effects can be achieved when several runs of different colored lamps are installed within the same light cove. Each color can be assigned a separate dimming circuit. The light can be blended into a warm or cool color, or a bright or soft illumination to suit any decor.

• LONG LIFE. Lamp life of over 30,000 hours makes this product very suitable in hard to reach places. Servicing and frequent replacements will be eliminated.

• QUALITY. Manufactured under stringent quality control procedures, advanced machinery. Hence, quality is always assured.

• ECONOMICAL. Electrical consumption is much less than any other linear lighting. Uses only 12 to 20 watts per linear meter. It is the only lighting fixture for its price that has all these qualities, and provides optimum return for your investments.

	Neon and Cold Cathode	Fluorescent
Lumens per linear foot	84 to 768 Note: Illumination level of lamps depends on the color and power rating of the system.	725 ti 1300
Watts per linear foot	5 to 10 watts	10 and up
Burning hours	30,000 hours and up	10,000 hours
Bendability	1" to 2.5" radius Note: Provides flexibility to the design	Not applicable
Length	Custom	Standard
Colors	Over 50 colors to choose from	Limited palette
Vibration Proof	Yes	No
Dimming	Standard	Limited
Dark Spots and Shadows/Heat Spots	Can be eliminated without problems	Common problem

• COLD CATHODE PROVIDES UNINTERRUPTED LINEAR LIGHT because it can be mounted with right angle electrodes, the dark spots caused by fluorescent sockets are totally eliminated.

• COLD CATHODE IS ENERGY EFFICIENT. 5 to 10 watts per linear foot.

• COLD CATHODE IS COST EFFECTIVE. With a minimum rated life of 30,000 hours, at an 84 hours a week, that's almost 7 years before re-lamping is required.

• COLD CATHODE IS SO FLEXIBLE. It can be bent back on itself into an arc with a radius as small as 2.5".

• COLD CATHODE OFFERS GREAT COLORS. Coating the inside of the lamps with an assortment of phosphors produces a wide range of custom colored lights - a vast improvement over the low lumen and unrealiable theatrical gels used for fluorescent.

• COLD CATHODE CAN BE DIMMED FROM 100% DOWN TO 20% WITHOUT A SINGLE FLICKER.

• COLD CATHODE IS EXCELLENT FOR A HIGH VIBRATION ENVIRNMENT because it does not use a tungsten filament.

• COLD CATHODE IS GREAT FOR EXTERIOR GRAPHICS AND FOR DELINEATING STRUCTURES. It ignites perfectly even in a very low temperature.

• COLD CATHODE IS VERSATILE. It can be used in a whole gamut of applications, whether industrial, commercial, or public spaces.

A light-emitting-diode (LED) is a semiconductor diode that emits light when an electric current is applied in the forward direction of the device, as in the simple LED circuit. The effect is a form of electroluminescence where incoherent and narrow-spectrum light is emitted from the p-n junction.

LEDs are widely used as indicator lights on electronic devices and increasingly in higher power applications such as flashlights and area lighting. An LED is usually a small area light source, often with optics added to the chip to shape its radiation pattern and assist in reflection. The color of the emitted light depends on the composition and condition of the semiconducting material used, and can be infrared, visible, or ultraviolet. Besides lighting, interesting applications include using UV-LEDs for sterilization of water and disinfection of devices, and as a grow light to enhance photosynthesis in plants.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

The first known report of a light-emitting solid-state diode was made in 1907 by the British experimenter H. J. Round of Marconi Labs when he noticed electroluminescence produced from a crystal of silicon carbide while using a cat's-whisker detector. Russian Oleg Vladimirovich Losev independently created the first LED in the mid 1920s; his research, though distributed in Russian, German and British scientific journals, was ignored, and no practical use was made of the discovery for several decades. Rubin Braunstein of the Radio Corporation of America reported on infrared emission from gallium arsenide (GaAs) and other semiconductor alloys in 1955. Braunstein observed infrared emission generated by simple diode structures using GaSb, GaAs, InP, and Ge-Si alloys at room temperature and at 77 K. In 1961, experimenters Bob Biard and Gary Pittman working at Texas Instruments, found that gallium arsenide gave off infrared radiation when electric current was applied. Biard and Pittman were able to establish the priority of their work and received the patent for the infrared light-emitting diode.

The first practical visible-spectrum (red) LED was developed in 1962 by Nick Holonyak Jr., while working at General Electric Company. He later moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Holonyak is seen as the "father of the light-emitting diode". M. George Craford, a former graduate student of Holonyak's, invented the first yellow LED and 10x brighter red and red-orange LEDs in 1972.

Shuji Nakamura of Nichia Corporation of Japan demonstrated the first high-brightness blue LED based on InGaN borrowing on critical developments in GaN nucleation on sapphire substrates and the demonstration of p-type doping of GaN which were developed by I. Akasaki and H. Amano in Nagoya. In 1995, Alberto Barbieri at the Cardiff University Laboratory (GB) investigated the efficiency and reliability of high-brightness LEDs demonstrating very high result by using a transparent contact made of indium tin oxide (ITO) on (AlGaInP/GaAs) LED. The existence of blue LEDs and high efficiency LEDs quickly led to the development of the first white LED, which employed a Y3Al5O12:Ce, or "YAG", phosphor coating to mix yellow (down-converted) light with blue to produce light that appears white. Nakamura was awarded the 2006 Millennium Technology Prize for his invention.

The development of LED technology has caused their efficiency and light output to increase exponentially, with a doubling occurring about every 36 months since the 1960s, in a similar way to Moore's law. The advances are generally attributed to the parallel development of other semiconductor technologies and advances in optics and material science. This trend is normally called Haitz's Law after Dr. Roland Haitz.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

• EFFICIENCY. LEDs produce more light per watt than incandescent bulbs. This is useful in battery powered or energy-saving devices.

• COLOR. LEDs can emit light of an intended color without the use of color filters that traditional lighting methods require. This is more efficient and can lower initial costs.

• SIZE. LEDs can be very small (>2 mm2) and are easily populated onto printed circuit boards.

• On/Off time: LEDs light up very quickly. A typical red indicator LED will achieve full brightness in microseconds. LEDs used in communications devices can have even faster response times.

• CYCLING. LEDs are ideal for use in applications that are subject to frequent on-off cycling, unlike fluorescent lamps that burn out more quickly when cycled frequently, or HID lamps that require a long time before restarting.

• DIMMING. LEDs can very easily be dimmed either by Pulse-width modulation or lowering the forward current.

• COOL LIGHT. In contrast to most light sources, LEDs radiate very little heat in the form of IR that can cause damage to sensitive objects or fabrics. Wasted energy is dispersed as heat through the base of the LED.

• SLOW FAILURE. LEDs mostly fail by dimming over time, rather than the abrupt burn-out of incandescent bulbs.

• LIFETIME. LEDs can have a relatively long useful life. One report estimates 35,000 to 50,000 hours of useful life, though time to complete failure may be longer. Fluorescent tubes typically are rated at about 10,000 to 15,000 hours, depending partly on the conditions of use, and incandescent light bulbs at 1,000 - 2,000 hours.

• SHOCK RESISTANCE. LEDs, being solid state components, are difficult to damage with external shock, unlike fluorescent and incandescent bulbs which are fragile.

• FOCUS. The solid package of the LED can be designed to focus its light. Incandescent and fluorescent sources often require an external reflector to collect light and direct it in a usable manner.

• TOXICITY. LEDs do not contain mercury, unlike fluorescent lamps.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

• HIGH PRICE. LEDs are currently more expensive, price per lumen, on an initial capital cost basis, than most conventional lighting technologies. The additional expense partially stems from the relatively low lumen output and the drive circuitry and power supplies needed. However, when considering the total cost of ownership (including energy and maintenance costs), LEDs far surpass incandescent or halogen sources and begin to threaten compact fluorescent lamps.

• TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCE. LED performance largely depends on the ambient temperature of the operating environment. Over-driving the LED in high ambient temperatures may result in overheating of the LED package, eventually leading to device failure. Adequate heat-sinking is required to maintain long life. This is especially important when considering automotive, medical, and military applications where the device must operate over a large range of temperatures, and is required to have a low failure rate.

• VOLTAGE SENSITIVITY. LEDs must be supplied with the voltage above the threshold and a current below the rating. This can involve series resistors or current-regulated power supplies.

• LIGHT QUALITY. Most white LEDs have spectra that differ significantly from a black body radiator like the sun or an incandescent light. The spike at 460 nm and dip at 500 nm can cause the color of objects to be perceived differently under LED illumination than sunlight or incandescent sources, due to metamerism, red surfaces being rendered particularly badly by typical phosphor based white LEDs. However, the color rendering properties of common fluorescent lamps are often inferior to what is now available in state-of-art white LEDs.

• AREA LIGHT RESOURCE. LEDs do not approximate a "point source" of light, but rather a lambertian distribution. So LEDs is difficult to use in applications needing a spherical light field. LEDs are not capable of providing divergence below a few degrees. This is contrasted with lasers, which can produce beams with divergences of 0.2 degrees or less.

• BLUE HAZARD. There is increasing concern that blue LEDs and white LEDs are now capable of exceeding safe limits of the so-called blue-light hazard as defined in eye safety specifications such as ANSI/IESNA RP-27.1-05: Recommended Practice for Photobiological Safety for Lamp and Lamp Systems.

• BLUE POLLUTION. Because white LEDs emit much more blue light than conventional outdoor light sources such as high-pressure sodium lamps, the strong wavelength dependence of Rayleigh scattering means that LEDs can cause more light pollution than other light sources. It is therefore very important that LEDs are fully shielded when used outdoors. Compared to low-pressure sodium lamps, which emit at 589.3nm, the 460 nm emission spike of white and blue LEDs is scattered about 2.7 times more by the Earth's atmosphere. LEDs should not be used for outdoor lighting near astronomical observatories.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

• MINIATURE LEDs. These are mostly single-die LEDs used as indicators, and they come in various-size packages

• FIVE-AND-TWELVE-VOLT LEDs. These are ordinary miniature LEDs that incorporate a suitable series resistor for direct connection to a 5 V or 12 V supply.

• FLASHING LEDS. Flashing LEDs are used as attention seeking indicators where it is desired to avoid the complexity of external electronics. Flashing LEDs resemble standard LEDs but they contain an integrated multivibrator circuit inside which causes the LED to flash with a typical period of one second. In diffused lens LEDs this is visible as a small black dot. Most flashing LEDs emit light of a single color, but more sophisticated devices can flash between multiple colors and even fade through a color sequence using RGB color mixing.

• HIGH POWER LEDS. High power LEDs (HPLED) can be driven at hundreds of mA (vs. tens of mA for other LEDs), some with more than one ampere of current, and give out large amounts of light. Since overheating is destructive, the HPLEDs must be highly efficient to minimize excess heat; furthermore, they are often mounted on a heat sink to allow for heat dissipation. If the heat from a HPLED is not removed, the device will burn out in seconds.

• MULTI-COLORED LEDS. A bi-color LED is actually two different LEDs in one case. It consists of two dies connected to the same two leads but in opposite directions. Current flow in one direction produces one color, and current in the opposite direction produces the other color. Alternating the two colors with sufficient frequency causes the appearance of a blended third color. For example, a red/green LED operated in this fashion will color blend to produce a yellow appearance. A tri-color LED is also two LEDs in one case, but the two LEDs are connected to separate leads so that the two LEDs can be controlled independently and lit simultaneously. A three-lead arrangement is typical with one commmon lead (anode or cathode). RGB LEDs contain red, green and blue emitters, generally using a four-wire connection with one common lead (anode or cathode). The Taiwanese LED manufacturer Everlight has introduced a 3 watt RGB package capable of driving each die at 1 watt.

• ALPHANUMERIC LEDS. LED displays are available in seven-segment and starburst format. Seven-segment displays handle all numbers and a limited set of letters. Starburst displays can display all letters. Seven-segment LED displays were in widespread use in the 1970s and 1980s, but increasing use of liquid crystal displays, with their lower power consumption and greater display flexibility, has reduced the popularity of numeric and alphanumeric LED displays.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

LED can be used in various applications such as the following:

• Indicators and signs

• Lighting

• Smart Lighting

• Non-visual applications

Source: www.wikipedia.org

A website (alternatively, web site or Web site, from the proper noun World Wide Web) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or more web servers, usually accessible via the Internet.

A Web page is a document, typically written in (X)HTML, that is almost always accessible via HTTP, a protocol that transfers information from the Web server to display in the user's Web browser.

All publicly accessible websites are seen collectively as constituting the "World Wide Web".

The pages of a website can usually be accessed from a common root URL called the homepage, and usually reside on the same physical server. The URLs of the pages organize them into a hierarchy, although the hyperlinks between them control how the reader perceives the overall structure and how the traffic flows between the different parts of the site.

Some websites require a subscription to access some or all of their content. Examples of subscription sites include many business sites, parts of many news sites, academic journal sites, gaming sites, and message boards.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

Having a website is important, especially to either small or big-scale businesses because it will serve as a means to show and EDUCATE the world their product or their goal, and let them know what their business is all about. It serves as another form of advertising, aside from television and radio commercials, flyers, billboards, signages, etc. It is also serves an alternative means of COMMUNICATION for existing and potential customers. It is also important that a website is up-to-date, hence WEB MAINTENANCE.

• STATIC WEBSITE simply presents pre-defined information to the user. It may include information about a company and its products and services via text, photos, Flash animation, audio/video and interactive menus and navigation. This type of website usually displays the same information to all visitors, thus the information is static. Similar to handing out a printed brochure to customers or clients, a static website will generally provide consistent, standard information for an extended period of time. Although the website owner may make updates periodically, it is a manual process to edit the text, photos and other content and may require basic website design skills and software. Visitors are not able to control what information they receive via a static website, and must instead settle for whatever content the website owner has decided to offer at that time.

• DYNAMIC WEBSITE displays different information depending on the visitor, thus the information is dynamic. Similar to talking to a customer service representative on the telephone, a dynamic website will provide personalized, real-time information and take the appropriate action intended to serve the customer's needs immediately. The website usually requires advanced programming and a database, and it often includes admin tools for the website owner to update the website content frequently and easily. In summary, visitors are able to control what information they wish to receive via a dynamic website, instead of settling for only static content that the website owner has decided to offer. In addition, a visitor may be able to manipulate the content of the website and perform a multitude of tasks.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

A signage is any kind of graphics created to display information to a particular audience, typically wayfinding information on streets, outside and inside of buildings.

• STREET SIGNAGE are signs stamped out of metal with lettering embossed, printed, or both.

• NEON SIGNAGE which is also known as electric lighting.

• MODULAR SIGNAGE. A signage system that consists of pre designed elementary units.

• CUSTOM-MADE SIGNAGE are built from scratch to suit a specific requirement presented by a client or a specific project.

• MODULAR CURVED FRAME TECHNOLOGY (MCFT). A contemporary fusion between custom-made signage and modular sign systems.

• LED SIGNAGE. LED lighting which uses light-emitting diodes technology.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

There may be many reasons why people put up signages, but they all have a very similar goal, which is to communicate and inform their existing and/or potential customers. Signages are important, most especially to businesses because they could be used as a marketing strategy to improve sales, to inform people of promotional efforts, for people to be able to locate your business.