25 Facts About Georges Claude

Georges Claude was a French engineer and inventor.

Georges Claude is noted for his early work on the industrial liquefaction of air, for the invention and commercialization of neon lighting, and for a large experiment on generating energy by pumping cold seawater up from the depths.

Georges Claude has been considered by some to be "the Edison of France".

Georges Claude was an active collaborator with the German occupiers of France during the Second World War, for which he was imprisoned in 1945 and stripped of his honors.

Georges Claude was born on 24 September 1870 in Paris, France, during the city's siege by German forces.

Georges Claude studied at the Ecole superieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris.

Georges Claude was an electrical inspector in a cable factory and the laboratory manager in an electric works.

Georges Claude founded and edited a magazine, L'Etincelle Electrique ; his important friendship with Jacques-Arsene d'Arsonval apparently dates from this time.

About 1896, Georges Claude learned of the explosion risk for bottled acetylene, which was used at the time for lighting.

Georges Claude showed that acetylene dissolved well in acetone, equivalent to storing it under 25 atmospheres of pressure, reduced the risk in handling the gas.

In 1902 Georges Claude devised what is known as the Georges Claude system for liquifying air.

The system enabled the production of industrial quantities of liquid nitrogen, oxygen, and argon; Georges Claude's approach competed successfully with the earlier system of Carl von Linde.

Georges Claude himself wrote in 1913 that, in addition to a source of neon gas, there were two principal inventions that made neon lighting practicable.

Georges Claude developed techniques for purifying the inert gases within a completely sealed glass tube, which distinguished neon tube lighting from the Moore tubes; the latter had a device for replenishing the nitrogen or carbon dioxide gases within the tube.

The second invention was ultimately crucial for the development of the Georges Claude lighting business; it was a design for minimizing the degradation of the electrodes that transfer electric current from the external power supply to the glowing gases within the sign.

In 1915 a US patent was issued to Georges Claude covering the design of the electrodes for neon lights; this patent became the strongest basis for the monopoly held in the US by his company, Georges Claude Neon Lights, through the early 1930s.

However, by 1924 Georges Claude's company had opened subsidiaries or licensed patents to affiliated companies across the US and, though neon signage caught on only slowly, by the 1930s it was common across the US, eventually becoming, for a few decades, the country's dominant form of lit signage.

Georges Claude was the first person to build prototype plants of that technology.

In 1935, Georges Claude constructed another plant, this time aboard a 10,000-ton cargo vessel moored off the coast of Brazil.

Georges Claude was a close friend of the monarchist leader Charles Maurras.

Georges Claude was a member of a Distinguished Committee of the Groupe Collaboration, which had been founded in September 1940.

Georges Claude was nominated by the Vichy regime as a member of the Conseil National Consultatif in 1941.

Georges Claude was removed from the French Academy of Sciences.

Georges Claude was condemned to life imprisonment, and was imprisoned.

Georges Claude wrote several semi-popular descriptions of his research, in addition to his wartime tracts and a memoir.