The Power of Radium at Your Disposal (Undark advertisement, The American Magazine, August 1921)
A full-page advertisement for Undark, a radium and zinc sulfide paint, from The American Magazine for August 1921. It lists what manufacturers were putting it on: watch dials, electric push buttons, house numbers, flashlights, compasses, gasoline gauges, and the buckles of bedroom slippers. A note to manufacturers at the foot of the page explains that the powder is mixed with adhesive and painted on with a brush, and gives the company's factory address as Orange, New Jersey.
Undark was a radium and zinc sulfide paint. The radium supplied the energy, the zinc sulfide converted it into visible light, and the result glowed for years without a power source. This advertisement, from The American Magazine for August 1921, sets out where a manufacturer might use it: watch and clock dials, electric push buttons, house numbers, light switches and instrument faces.
It is addressed to industry rather than to consumers, and as trade copy it is competent and specific about the advantage on offer.
The company was the United States Radium Corporation. Its dial painters, mostly young women, shaped their brushes to a point with their lips. The first lawsuits were filed in 1927, six years after this ran, and the Radium Girls cases went on to establish that an employer could be held liable for occupational disease. The paint in the advertisement and the paint in the litigation are the same paint.
Provenance
- Original source
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Undark_(Radium_Girls)_advertisement,_1921.jpg
- Collected
- This copy
- 1.2 MB · 1231 × 1795 pixels · archived here
- Rights
- Public domain, per the file's own licence record on Wikimedia Commons.
- SHA-256
3ac6e987cf81c5ce26f0b02245af1d6c90f67f0dd3c47af8b1f18c3ae4fac4a7
Accession № 0012. If you hold rights in this and would rather the copy did not exist, say so and it comes down.