Laced with radium, they dubbed it ’Undark.’ Radium Corp.įounded in 1914 in New York and with workshops in Newark, Jersey City and Orange, the company was originally only concerned with the production of uranium from carnotite ore obtained from mines in Colorado and Utah, before quickly moving onto the business of luminescent paint. The Radium Girlsīetween 19, some 4,000 workers, mainly young women, were employed in several dial painting factories across America by U.S. You could buy radium-infused chocolate, cosmetics ( ‘Science has created THO-RADIA to beautify women! Who wants to remain ugly!’) and even children’s toys.īut one of the largest uses for the miracle element came from the horology industry, and brought about possibly its biggest tragedy. Radium would be added to ‘therapeutic’ waters in health spas, toothpastes, heating pads and (it-doesn’t-bare-thinking-about), suppositories. The novelty of the luminescent metal led to it being marketed as something of a panacea, with early 20 thcentury doctors, or quacks who adopted the title, using it as a cure for everything from rheumatism to impotence, and wrinkles to cancer. That colossal radioactivity causes radium to emit a pale blue glow as it decays, a quality that brought it to the attention of a number of commercial operations.
Curie herself, the first woman to win a Nobel prize, the only woman to win two and the only scientist in history to be conferred with the award in two different scientific fields, is buried in a coffin covered with an inch of lead. Contaminated with radium 226, they are stored in lead-lined boxes in the Bibliotheque National in Paris. Marie Curie’s notebooks from over a century ago are still considered too dangerous to handle-and will be for another 1,500 years. It is also the most radioactive natural element on Earth, about one million times more so than the uranium itself. It is so scarce in fact, that it takes about seven tons of the ore to produce just one gram of radium. It is an extremely rare substance, making up only around one part per trillion of the Earth’s crust and is found in trace amounts in uranium ore. What is Radium?ĭiscovered on 21 stDecember 1898 by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre, radium is a chemical element in the group known as the alkaline earth metals. The change was a long time coming, with the harmful effects of radium being known for some years-although unfortunately, that knowledge came far too late for a great many people. The movie was actually shot in 1962, the same year Rolex made the switchover to the far safer tritium. The familiar clicking sound generated by the machine confirms all is in working order, picking up the ionizing radiation emitted from the radium on the watch’s luminescent hands and hour markers. Like any conscientious civil servant, Bond tests his Geiger counter before setting off, running it across the dial of his ref. No, the first outing on the big screen for Sean Connery’s James Bond.Ġ07 is off to search Crab Key, the island lair of the titular villain, to investigate the origin of a number of radioactive rock samples.