This book is a study of the electric sign in American literature and culture. Although this book is mainly about bulb and neon signs, it also deals with non-electric signs and related phenomena, such as movie sets. A central strategy of the author is to treat the architectural sign as semiotic and the semiotic sign as architectural. This technique serves a central thesis that the architectural sign, particularly the electric sign, made people more conscious of the 'sign' in the semiotic senses of the word. In fiction, poetry and commentary, the electric SIGN became a 'sign' of manifold meaning