He began his career in 1890 working in the engineering department of the United Edison Manufacturing Company. Moore left in 1894 to form his own companies, the Moore Electric Company and the Moore Light Company.
The Moore lamp Moore had devised his glow discharge lighting system by 1896. The Moore lamps utilized nitrogen or carbon dioxide as the luminous gas; Moore's innovation compensated for the gradual loss of gas in the lamp to the electrodes and the glass. Carbon dioxide gave a good quality white light. The first commercial installation was done in 1904 in a hardware store in
Newark, New Jersey. These were miniature lamps with a very different design than the much larger neon tubes used for
neon lighting; a
Smithsonian Institution website notes, "These small, low power devices use a physical principle called 'coronal discharge.' Moore mounted two electrodes close together in a bulb and added neon or argon gas. The electrodes would glow brightly in red or blue, depending on the gas, and the lamps lasted for years. Since the electrodes could take almost any shape imaginable, a popular application has been fanciful decorative lamps. Glow lamps found practical use as indicators in instrument panels and in many home appliances until the acceptance of
light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in the 1970s." Moore was awarded the John Scott Medal of
the Franklin Institute in 1911. ==Death==