Stick with Stardust for a moment. As those letters stand here, we can’t really get their full impact. They come from the original sign that made its debut with the casino in 1958. It was just after Sputnik was launched, and tourists were gathering here to watch atomic blasts at the Nevada Test Site. Its font became famously known as “Electra Jag” or, more familiarly, “Atomic.”The sign was the Strip’s largest, 216 feet long, rising 27 feet above the casino’s first floor, with 11,000 bulbs and 7,000 feet of neon tubing, sparkling with extraterrestrial splendor: it displayed the entire solar system, the Earth at its pre-Copernican center. It has been suggested that the original pinkish lettering matched the color of Vegas’s radioactive dust. The sign made an explosive impact and could be seen for three miles across the desert, a blast in its own right.
