X-Rays and Radium in Product Advertising:
Or Does Your Collectible Glow in the Dark?
By Michael R. Reilly,June 1996
Last Revised 04/20/2010
Within a few years of Rutherford’s discovery of x-rays in1895, Henri Becquerel and Marie Curie’s discoveries of radioactivity, x-rays andthe new element, radium, quickly became an obsession among the scientific worldand the general public. Led by Thomas Edison’s early developments in x-rayfluoroscopes and its mass production in kit form, the world soon came to regardx-rays and radioactive materials as curiosities and toy-like.
Early proclaimed uses of x-ray include transmutingworthless metals into gold, curing criminal behavior and improving learning bybombarding the human brain with x-rays. Radium, unlike x-rays, could be seen andit took on an illuminescent appearance in the dark, intriguing manyentrepreneurs into developing all sorts of quackery and gadgets for theunenlightened public.
Patent medicines developed with radium as an ingredientwere touted as cures for nearly every disease, such as arthritis, cancer, highblood pressure, and blindness. The charlatan especially worked his magic withit, from wearing radioactive belts for healing, to a device called the RadiumEar , a hearing aid fitted with the ingredient, Hearium. Radioactive toothpastesfor cleaner teeth and improved digestion to face creams to lighten thecomplexion were other clever products of questionable practicality and safety.An English gentleman (?), Frederick Godfrey, advertised a radioactive hairtonic, while in Germany a company made a candy bar laced with radium and sold asa “rejuvenator”. A company in Denver was selling a radium-basedcontraceptive jelly as late as 1953. A brand of contraceptive condoms calledRadium can be found in a small rectangular hinged lidded tin. Could RadiolOintment, a pimple salve, found in a small tin contain radium?
One of the more popular concoctions was “liquidsunshine” or radium water that was marketed as a tonic. A New York companyclaimed to supply over 150,000 customers with its product. Some people werelucky (and also defrauded) for certain tonics didn’t contain any radium at alllike Radol. Others weren’t so fortunate. Radithor was so radioactive that anumber of drinkers died from radium poisoning. Hundreds and hundreds of otherindividuals made their own radium tonics by filtering ordinary water throughradium-impregnated crocks. An example might be the Radium Ore Revigator Patd7-16-12, Trademark, The Radium Ore Revigator Company, 280 California St., SanFrancisco, Cal. This cream colored crock, with blue lettering stands 12 incheshigh, was made from 1912-1915. There were instructions on the sides on how touse it.
The radium craze also extended to visiting old uraniummines to breathe in “nature’s own remedy” and adding radium to the mudbaths at many popular resorts, including several in the city of Waukesha,Wisconsin. Several years ago radon gas levels were found in high proportions ina number of older buildings that led to almost a mass hysteria about protectingyour family from it. These older buildings, in some cases, were found to bethese very same resort spa locations, and the mud baths had been simply boardedor cemented over.
Perhaps after your mud bath, you and several close friendswent to the local speakeasy during Prohibition for some entertainment. Thespeakeasy was usually dimly lit so not to draw attention to the establishment.In order to see your drink, the olive in your martini may have been dipped inradium salts or the rim of the glass coated with it as salt on a margarita glassis. The female visitors may have painted their lips or face with a radium-lacedcosmetic or the gentleman applied a radium hair tonic or cream/powder to hishair. All of these produced eerie glow in the dark objects of amusement for thepatrons.
Orange was a color hard to come by naturally so uranium orradium was applied to the materials of certain brands of tableware to producenot only orange but other festive colors as well.
If you’re a collector of wrist watches, many early oneshad the numerals on the dial face painted on with radium-laced paints to enablethe buyer to tell the time in the dark. It’s estimated that nearly 1/4 of allU.S. military men in W.W.I wore them. The military used radium paint on manythings, especially in aircraft. The pilots sat in cockpits filled with gaugessoftly glowing of radium. So did the bombardier, peering intently through hisinstruments to place some other lethal device on its target.
Some other early thoughts or uses were to paint bicycleswith radium paint to be seen in the dark. One man thought that painting a roomwith the paint would eliminate the need for kerosene or electric lighting.Another gentleman actually painted pictures using radium paints to produce weirdeffects when shown in the dark. One farmer wanted to give his chickens feed withradium so that the chickens would lay hard-boiled eggs. Another insisted thatfertilizing your fields with radium would improve crop production and producebetter tasting foods.
I have few pictures of these products but lack the time toreproduce what I have right now. I would like to hear from readers about otheritems they know of that had radium as an ingredient and perhaps in the nearfuture a more comprehensive listing with illustrations could be printed in thisarticle.
Bibliography:
Bottles by Michael Polak, 1st ed., The ConfidentCollector, 1994.
Multiple Exposures: Chronicles of the Radiation Age byCatherine Caufield, 1st ed., Harper & Row, 1989.
Radiation Safety Training program given by Susan Engelhardt,Madison, WI., to GE Medical System employees, June 1996.
The Encyclopedia of Advertising Tins: Smalls & Samplesby David Zimmerman, publisher same, 1994.