Illuminati-R-Us

I don't know what brought it to mind, but I was just recalling a wrist watch my dad kept in his dresser. He let me look at it now and then. It was a basic wrist watch, black face with off white hands. But the great part was that the hands and numbers glowed in the dark. Not the modern "charge it up" under a bright light type, but honest to god glows forever.

It was a radium dial watch. The hands and numbers were painted with a compound of some radium isotope powder and some mineral salts of some sort. The radiation made the minerals glow. They glowed a pale yellow/green color, not unlike say a key lime pie filling.

What fascinated me, and still would, is that the hands seemed alive. If I looked really close, I could see the light churning around. Like it was simmering. The radioactive decay I guess happened in a random way, so at any instant some of the mineral crystals would glow. You could watch it seething along.

This video of something kinda shows the alive thing, though it is much grainier, more sparkly.



I suspect if I wore such a watch today and tried to get on an airplane, my day would get real busy.

I had one as a kid. I never looked that closely at it, but now I wish I had.

I had one as a kid to - glow in the dark stuff.