Featured An Interesting Artifact from the Early Atomic Age

Thank you for the post. Brought back memories of the Disney Hour the family would watch.

 

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No better than before.

 

I assume "exceedingly minute" means unmeasurably small (within epsilon of 0), otherwise you could tell on one of those hand-held XRF machines.

 

Much, much tinier than one of those machines could ever detect, I'm pretty sure.

 

Don't believe XRF testing would do it but I do believe, and I could be wrong, that right after it was Irradiated it went through a tube attached to a Geiger counter where the person could verify that it had been Irradiated

I believe this has the original coin in it as I seriously doubt my grandfather needed the dime so much at any point that he would break it open. It was found in his desk with other coins and medals he had collected over the years. Some from his time as a truck driver during WWII.

He can home from the war with a full SS uniform, sword, gun and other stuff like a Nazi flag. All Nazi stuff he had my grandmother disposed of but there was notgeld and a lot of old German and French money.

 

I have not checked my radionuclide book to confirm that 22 second halflife cited in the writeup.... but the rule of thumb is a radioactive material has reached background level after 10 halflives. So it would basically be back to normal in 220 seconds.

 

If you want to collect them, several holders are available.


Case legends on irradiated dimes.

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF ATOMIC ENERGY NEUTRON IRRADIATED
(in black)
ORNL – UCNC – OAK RIDGE NEUTRON IRRADIATED
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF ATOMIC ENERGY NEUTRON IRRADIATED
(in blue)
Not shown:
OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY – NEUTRON IRRADIATED –
(May be the earliest variety.)
(More on my blog here:https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2019/01/neutron-irradiated-dimes.html )

Your dimes are not sealed. The World's Fair holders are a bit problematic as artifacts, but interesting nonetheless.

Not exactly true. First of all, we knew that radiation was not fun because we bombed two Japanese cities, killing about 200,000 people. But, like fire and sharp sticks, how you use a tool determines on how safe it is. Secondly, we do not have an entire generation of people 70 years old with foot cancer. Third, I was fluorscoped not just in the Buster Brown shoe store, but at a hospital ahead of heart surgery in 1956. Fluoroscopy was greatly restricted in the 1960s and like the X-rays in your dentist's office, today's systems are minimal compared to the past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoroscopy

 

When I was there in 1967 it was an unattended exhibit, meaning just signs, no one there to explain things. You walked up a set of steps and put your dime in (I don't remember any signs saying the dime had to be dated 1964 or earlier) The dime rolled down a plastic chute in a tank of water and stopped next to the neutron source in the center of it. After a little bit it was released and continued rolling down the chute and dropping into a return chamber. You picked it up, put it in the plastic ring, into the aluminum shell, and put a plastic disc over it. You then put it in another machine that rolled it slightly crimping the shell a little to keep the plastic disc in place. I don't remember where the geiger counter was located. But of course my 1965's didn't elicit a response. I didn't think anything of it at the time, I didn't realize they were supposed to be made radioactive. (Cut me some slack, I was six years old.) even if there had been a sign saying the dimes need to be 64 or earlier I wouldn't have understood why. I had become interested in coins the previous year, but in 1966 there weren't any coin books out there available to me that said ANYTHING about clad coins.

Yes but back in the EARLY days it's dangers were not known. The shoe fluoroscopes were popular in the 30's, 40's and less so in the 50's. In the early days radiation and radioactive substances were considered energy booster and were used as health aids. Radium infused water was a popular item. They had radium toothpaste etc. (radium was considered to be THE big health item and there were a LOT of patent medicines that contained radium.)

 

My apologies for using a bit of poetic license if it could be called that when I said it was toasting little kids toes. I do believe it was a good call to end the practice of casually exposing someone to radiation, and the possible risks this invites, for something as frivolous as checking to see if your child's buster browns fit just right.

 

You might want to check out the 1987 documentary Radium City. The entire film is available online. unfortunately no longer for free. It deals with a group of young women in their teens and early twenties working at Radium Dial, and another company. Their job was to use radium paint to paint the numerals of clock dials and watch faces. They were trained to paint the numbers by twirling the brush between their lips, dip it in the paint, paint the number, then put it back between her lips to twirl it again. And they would do that all day long, lip, dip, paint, lip, dip, paint. Naturally they would be consuming a quantity of radium paint every day.

Interesting book on the subject is The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore

 

Wow...cocaine laced revitalizing tonics and opium laced calmatives don't seem so bad compared to shooting your glands with radiation or drinking Irradiated water until your jaw falls off. :/

 

This is an awesome BBC documentary on the still functional radium bath houses in the Czech republic:

 

Small correction, Radon baths, not radium baths. Probably a lot safer but still rather weird. Radon is an inert gas that doesn't combine with anything. Radium is chemically similar to calcium so the body treats it like calcium and stores it in the bones, causing bone necrosis, bone cancer, and leukemia.

 

But its daughter products, polonium, bismuth, and lead, certainly do. They stick to any available surface, most especially lung tissue.