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Radium paint used zinc sulfide phosphor, usually trace metal doped with an activator, such as copper (for green light), silver (blue-green), and more rarely copper-magnesium (for yellow-orange light). The phosphor degrades relatively fast and the dials lose luminosity in several years to a few decades; clocks and other devices available from ...
In Bloomsburg, it continued to produce items with luminescent paint using radium, strontium-90 and cesium-137 such as watch dials, instrument gauge faces, deck markers, and paint. [8] It ceased radium processing altogether in 1968, spinning off those operations as Nuclear Radiation Development Corporation, LLC, based in Grand Island, New York.
Radium dials are watch, clock and other instrument dials painted with luminous paint containing radium-226 to produce radioluminescence. Radium dials were produced throughout most of the 20th century before being replaced by safer tritium -based luminous material in the 1970s and finally by non-toxic, non-radioactive strontium aluminate ...
The luminous paint used on the dials contained a mixture of zinc sulfide activated with silver, and powdered radium, a product that the Radium Dial Company named Luma. However, unlike the US Radium Corporation, Radium Dial Company was specifically set up to only paint dials, and no other radium processing took place at the premises.
Radium was used in luminous paint until the 1960s, when it was replaced with the other radioisotopes mentioned above due to health concerns. [1] In addition to alpha and beta particles , radium emits penetrating gamma rays , which can pass through the metal and glass of a watch dial, and skin.
Super-LumiNova is based on LumiNova branded pigments, invented in 1993 by the Nemoto staff members Yoshihiko Murayama, Nobuyoshi Takeuchi, Yasumitsu Aoki and Takashi Matsuzawa as a safe replacement for radium-based luminous paints. [1] The invention was patented in 1994 by Nemoto & Co., Ltd. and licensed to other manufacturers and watch brands. [2]
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Radium was used to make self-luminous paint from the early 20th century to about 1970. Promethium briefly replaced radium as a radiation source. Tritium is the only radiation source used in radioluminescent light sources today due to its low radiological toxicity and commercial availability. [3]