The Fine Points of Dating Lighted Signs
By John Bain #2099
(Excerpts from article published in Summer 2008 edition of The Keg)
Gentlemen, you can save the breath mints and flower bouquet for later. This is not an etiquette guide for taking a new interest to dinner and a movie. (Sorry, ladies) For this article, I have compiled some guidelines and illustrations that can help you figure out the age of those early, lighted treasures in your collection. These guidelines will usually get you within a few years of when the items were made; sometimes to the exact day they rolled off the assembly line.  
Patent Information
 
If the item you are dating has a patent number on it, you're off to a flying start. Patent information is one of the fastest ways to determine approximately when an item was made. Currently the Internet is best place that I know of for obtaining patent information - just surf on over to Google's Advanced Patent Search Engine at google.com/advanced_patent_search. There you can search by patent number, title, inventor, assignee (usually the manufacturer's name), classification, filing or issue dates, a key work or phrase (e.g. lighted advertising sign), or any combination of these data. Most of the time, you will search by number, date or assignee because those are the only patent data, if any, that will appear on the item you are dating. More ...