Narrow-Bandwidth Television Association

Over and over again I’ve seen the mechanical television image described as pinkish, not orange. Yet every neon, vintage or otherwise, I’ve ever seen has always been distinctly orange. What causes this? Were the original neon tubes actually pinkish due to a different gas mixture?

Maybe because the world was black and white in that days and people couldn't see the difference.

A Neon tube gives an orange cathode light and a blue more unsharp light. May be that this is on the anode electrode. It is possible that the intensity is dependent on the pressure of the Neon gas in the lamp. That is the reason that Nixie indicator lamps have an orange filter painting over the glass bulb, to remove the blue light.

The old Neon plate lamps absolutely have a bluisch tinge in the orange.

Now that you mention it Klaas, I have seen that blue halo, so that could well be the reason. I always thought that it was an illusion caused by light scattered off of the glass. I wonder if overdriving the lamp might make it more pronounced?

and DrZarkov, I used to make that joke to my dad when I was little!

Recently I bought a few vintage neon figurine lamps on Ebay to check out the range of colors they produce (phosphor-based or not), and when I plugged them in, lo and behold, they were pinkish! This is the best photo I could get, comparing the pink lamp to a neon night light from the 60s. The pink is the right color, but the night light is a bit more orange rather than yellow in real life. Mystery solved!