D. McFarlane Moore

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Daniel McFarlane Moore was an U.S. inventor who created in 1894 gas discharge lamps, known as Moore lamps, in much respects the precursor of today fluorescent lamps.

First working for Edison, he departed from the scheme of incandescent lamps to investigate light generation from electrical discharge in a gas. He used low pressure nitrogen and carbon dioxide, yielding respectively pinkish and reasonably white light. Despite efficiency of about three times as good as concurrent incandescent lights, the tubes were expensives, of forbidding sizes and required clumsy maintenance. In 1898, the chapel at Madison Square Gardens was lighted with Moore lamps. They have been used in various places till the 1930's.

These lamps brought forward the idea of Heinrich Geissler in the 1850s' of shielding in a tube the gas emitting light, and were the inspiration for later realizations by Peter Cooper Hewitt (mercury-vapor lamp) and Georges Claude (neon lamp).