The Neon Color That Became Impossible to Make | WSJ Coveted

- Let's talk about the evolution of human beings. We evolved sensory organs, our eyes, and we were drawn to the light.

- People were just like in awe of it when it first come out. They called it liquid fire. - The one thing about neon is once you see a beautiful display, you never forget it.

- In "Casablanca," you see a neon sign, it's striking because it's black and white and it still shows up.

- We used quite a lot of it on the film "Eyes Wide Shut" for Stanley Kubrick. He wanted the whole film to be natural lighting.

- The cultural significance of neon in a nutshell, I hate to use the word iconic because it gets so overused, but it is, and unfortunately it is often a story of disappearing.

- I might get one or two jobs a month because everybody's going LED. - Over the last few years, there has been a reduction in the amount of colors that are available.

- Green is no longer the green that we've used. Green has more of a bluish green tint. - There have been colors in the past that were no longer cost-effective.

Some of those have been terminated and they probably will never come back. - And so, there is one company that has figured out how to find another source for creating this shade of green that people are after.

- Which is Voltarc in Connecticut. - Reformulation is very complicated. Our customers demand that when we specify a color match, our color does match.

- None of it matches. There's some good drama.

- The process for making coated neon sign tubing begins with glass washing. Once the glass is washed, it's transported to the coating department where it is up flush coated, meaning that the coating is pushed up from the bottom to the top and then allowed to drain out.

The drying process is critical in getting the proper color, the proper lumens, the proper output. Once the glass is coated and dried, it's transported back to the lehring department.