BEFORE THE EARLY years of the 20th Century, if you wanted to tell the time in the dark you had a choice: commission a montre à tact or a repeater from a posh watchmaker like that nice M Bréguet. As the name suggests, you felt the time on the dial of a montre à tact, whereas a repeater chimed the hours and minutes. Neither was cheap or easy to make. So once Marie and Pierre Curie isolated the glow-in-the-dark wonder-element radium, watch and clockmakers (car and aircraft instrument manufacturers, too) were eager to put the new substance to work. 'Does your watch tell the time in the dark?' asked US firm Ingersoll before extolling the advantages of its new radium-lumed Radiolite watches.
Radium-226 on its own isn't much use as a paint for watch dials and hands; it's simply not bright enough. But add some zinc sulphide and a solvent carrier and you've got a paintable compound that'll glow happily for perhaps 1015 years. The radiation from the radium slowly breaks down the zinc sulphide, eventually dimming the glow to nothing.
Bu hikaye Octane dergisinin September 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye Octane dergisinin September 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Will China Change Everything? - China is tearing up modern motor manufacture but is yet to make more than a ripple in the classic car world. That could be about to change dramatically
China now dominates the automotive world in a way even Detroit in its heyday would have struggled to comprehend.Helped by Government incentives, the new car world is dominated by China's industries: whether full cars that undercut Western models by huge amounts, ownership of storied European brands such as Lotus and Volvo, or ownership and access to the vast majority of raw materials that go into EV cars, its influence is far-reaching and deep. However, this automotive enlightenment hasn't manifested itself in the classic world in any meaningful way - until now.
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