These paints were used on the dials of clocks and watches to make them glow in the dark.
Wall clock with radium dial.
Dials painted in ottawa appeared on westclox s popular big ben little ben and travel clocks.
In fact timepieces with radium dials were still made for years after but not in as large of numbers.
Any dial made with radium after 1950 was marked with ra or r indicating the presence of radium paint on the dial.
By the 1920 s and 1930 s some dialpainters and former dialpainters began to suffer from a variety of illnesses often crippling and frequently fatal as a result of.
The bottom line watches and clocks made with radium are considered.
This glow in the dark paint was also used on airplane dials and gauges which allowed people to read clocks gauges and dials at night with no other light.
This radium dial was probably painted by a dialpainter that later may have suffered and or died as a result of having painted the numbers and hands on this and other watch dials.
Luminous radium found a place in a dial painting studios where glowing paint was applied to instrument gauges clocks and wristwatches for the usrc united states radium company.
And like united states radium corporation radium dial hired young women to paint the dials using the same lip dip paint approach as the women in new jersey and by another unaffiliated plant in waterbury connecticut that supplied the waterbury.
During world war ii radium dials and gauges allowed pilots to fly at night without cockpit lights.
A radium watch becomes hazardous only when someone opens one and tinkers with the dials inhaling radioactive dust particles.
Subsequently radium dials have largely been replaced by phosphorescent or occasionally tritium based light sources.
And we all know that such dials should pose little in the way of actual hazards as long as you don t make the mistake of opening up the watch and accidentally inhale a fragment of radium paint radium let s recall has a half life of about 1600 years so radium dial watches and clocks from the early part of the 20th century are still.
When word spread about radium many consumers refused to purchase these clocks and watches anymore.
After testing 30 watches kept in a typical room researchers.