RADIUM AS A SAVER OF LIFE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 95, 22 April 1922, Page 17

RADIUM AS A SAVER OF LIFE.

NEW DEVICES IN MANY SPHERES. If less spectacular than in its use for the treatment of cancer, radium can play a very important role in industry. Through t'je development of radium luminous material, many of the accidents in mines, factories, and other industrial institutions where darkness means danger may be eliminated.

Radium luminous material is being shown in this year's motor show, says a "Central News" wire from New York, used on petrol gauges and other motor car parts to render them visible in the dark, obviating the necessity and danger of lighting a match.

The same material that illuminates the face of the watch is now being employed in factories on power-line switches, where fumbling might mean death to the operator by electrocution.

High-pressure gauges, which are installed as an insurance against dangers, are deprived of a great deal of their safety value through inconstant lighting. Their dependability as Indicators is increased tremendously through making them safe for twenty-four hours a day by the application of radium luminous material.

Electric switches are often set in places which are unlit. This includes electric lighting equipment, which is usually visible only after the light it controls has been turned on.

A spot of radium luminous material on the button or switch makes them easily located.

In the same way a fire alarm or a fire extinguisher is deprived of a good deal of its efficiency through being invisible in the dark. Radium luminous material enables them to be found at once. Telephones, which must often be found quickly in the dark in emergencies, various emergency call bells, and revolvers are more useful if bo illuminated. Gun sights, illuminated, insure accuracy of aim in the dark.

The need of illuminating poison bottles, so that they may stand out warningly in the dark, has been demonstrated on many occasions. An interesting safety device is the safe combination, whose dial is radium illuminated, so that no artificial light need be used for it.

The industrial uses of radium luminous material are many. Bolts that are necessarily attached to the dark underportions of machines and equipment are being touched with luminous material, with a consequent great saving in life and limb.

In mines where the carrying of oil lamps or the placing of electric lighting equipment is not feasible, radium has been found to be a boon to humanity.

The value of radium at aea. is also beginning to be recognised.

Not only compa.-* diate, but steering wheels, gauges, and other instruments which should be instantly and uninterruptedly visible, are now being touched with it.

While radium ij a most costly element, It is so powerful that when mixed with other materials a minute particle is effective in makin__ material self-lum-inous for years.

It is this quality which makes radium luminous material commercially powiblt.