![]() In doing this, they often swallowed some of the radioactive paint. To create fine tips on their paint brushes for small surfaces, many radium dial painters licked the bristles of their paintbrushes. ![]() This helped the pilots avoid being seen by enemy soldiers. 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.ĭuring World War II, radium dials and gauges allowed pilots to fly at night without cockpit lights. These paints were used on the dials of clocks and watches to make them glow-in-the-dark. When radium was discovered in the early 1900s, people were fascinated by the mysterious glow it creates, and it was added to many everyday products, including paints. Radium is one type of radioactive material that could be found in antiques. Glow-in-the-dark paint is now made without radioactive material, but in the early 1900s radioactive materials were used to make paint that glowed (radioluminescence). Various clocks and watches are pictured with glowing numbers on their faces, due to radium’s ability to make certain materials glow. However, it can register on a hand-held Geiger counter if the object is close enough to the monitor. The amount of radiation these items emit is small. Radioactive antiques can continue to emit very low-levels of radiation for thousands of years, if not longer. Cloisonné jewelry gets some of its yellow, orange and off-white colors from small amounts of uranium in the glaze.It also makes the glass glow bright green under a black light. This gives the glass its yellow-green color. ![]()
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