Time to get out the Geiger Counter and explore some glowy things I found in storage!
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Radium Dial clock radio in Viewer Mail 10 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J3cu67SBZY
An interesting article on the hazards of those early labs - https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/magazine/my-great-great-aunt-discovered-francium-and-it-killed-her.html
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By Fran

13 thoughts on “Mil-spec radium dial panel meters”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Donna Rail says:

    I love these films where you fix things up..

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Ales2000 says:

    But is it really Ra-226? There is little information about that, but Ra-228, Th-228 and Sr-90 were being used, too.

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Rodney Daub says:

    What did they measure?

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars ThinkingBetter says:

    How many people have died from cancers due to wearing wrist watches with radium in the dials? Nobody knows, but it's probably a high number.

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars AGENA says:

    are old darkroom timers hot too?

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Charles Tomasino says:

    Awesome sauce😆

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Wayne the Brain says:

    A man would've opened one and took a geiger reading 🧐

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Alan Sinclair says:

    I worked for a company that had a bunch of this. Some people died of cancer

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Stanley Denning says:

    There is one thing you didn't mention. What were these gauges used for? There is no indication of measurement on them. Just a graduate from 0 to 100. Amps? Watts? Voltage? Temperature? The angle of the dangle? What?

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars George Gonzalez says:

    I had a physics professor bring over a fancy geiger-counter to check over my Collins R-392 military radio. It had a small barely glowing tuning meter. The counter showed 13 millirems/hr at 4 inches away. Pretty high, even it was probably about 8 half-lifes run down.

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars George Gonzalez says:

    A lot of meters are painted with things other than Radium, like mesothorium, which is insanely radioactive, with a half-life of about 6 years. So it's likely those dials, if they are 60 years old, will be down to about 2^-10 of their initial radioactivity, or just one part per thousand of the original activity!

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Freaksnake says:

    Didn't the young women who worked in the watch face factories with this paint have a name for their collective? "The ****** Girls" ….. their story was among the first I ever heard as a young lad about a corporation attempting to evade accountability for damages to other human beings… and getting away with it scott free. I knew then, the world in charge was deceptive and evil.

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Dennis Mathias says:

    So Fran, at 1 foot what is the hazard? Is it dangerous at one foot?

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