Comments on: Music Sheet Has Radium Notes for Television Artists (Apr, 1932)

By: Paul Lindemeyer

Paul Lindemeyer — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 05:05:57 +0000

This was taken in the CBS-TV experiment studio. I recognize the white painted electric eye array form another photo.

By: blokeice

blokeice — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:28:37 +0000

of course once they found out how dangerous radium is, the marketing department had to scramble for a new way of selling it, they came up with such unsucessfull marketing points as: great for a musician who doesnt want kids”, “works as a glow in the dark hair remover”, and of course who could forget: “do it yourself cancer treatment kit”

By: Firebrand38

Firebrand38 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:42:02 +0000

Some people had to learn the hard way http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Byers who died in 1932 of radium poisoning after drinking 1400 bottles of Radithor http://www.orau.org/PTP/collec.....radith.htm

http://www.museumofquackery.com/devices/radium.htm & http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergo.....326629.pdf

So yeah, they knew….

By: jayessell

jayessell — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:52:16 +0000

McGowin…
Your post was deleted, but they knew Radium was dangerous.
Here’s a magazine article from 1932:
http://books.google.com/books?.....38;f=false

PS: Television technology evolved so rapidly the need for glow-in-the-dark
sheet music didn’t last long.

At YouTube there are many clips from late 1930s BBC TV experiments.
YouTube search for Alexandra Palace Television Society

By: MKremer

MKremer — Mon, 26 May 2008 22:23:45 +0000

Makes me wonder just how popular it was (in broadcast studios), and how many might have ultimately suffered from radiation exposure diseases (mostly among the staff/musicians constantly handling the sheets day-to-day) starting well after the periods of time involved.

By: jayessell

jayessell — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:28:54 +0000

Thanks Blurgle.
I mentioned some of that in a previous Radium post.
By the way… 50 million a pound in 1930ish dollars.

By: Blurgle

Blurgle — Fri, 23 May 2008 04:45:42 +0000

jayessell, you’re right about the minuscule amount used, but you’re wrong if you’re assuming small amount = safe. Radium is dangerous to work with even in infinitesimal amounts, and drawing with it – which often required the user to do something called “lippointing”, or using the mouth to moisten the brush so it would keep a point – could result in ingestion of toxic doses of radium.

During World War I, watch manufacturers began to paint watch hands and numbers with radium so as to make them readable in dark foxholes and night battlefields. The fad caught on, and by the 1930s almost all watches and even some clocks were painted with radium. Even given the tiny amount of radium in the paint, workers were exposed to so much of it because of lippointing that a huge percentage suffered from bone loss (especially in the jaw) cancers, and miscarriages.

Interestingly, by 1931 the danger of drawing with radium was known, but it wasn’t until 1935 that companies were forced to be more careful.

By: Torgo

Torgo — Fri, 23 May 2008 01:44:22 +0000

This is fascinating. I never heard of this before. It’s like a half-step between mechanical television, and fully electronic television.

By: jayessell

jayessell — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:40:39 +0000

The quantity of Radium on each page was probably nanoscopic.

The stuff was over a million dollars a pound!

(Now someone will look it up and tell me how wrong I am.)

By: Blurgle

Blurgle — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:41:08 +0000

I wonder if the guy who made the music boards had problems in later life, or perhaps he didn’t have to do it for long enough for it to become a health problem.

By: Max

Max — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:26:35 +0000

This sounds like the music manuscripts were created using the same stuff that made watches glow in the dark. It’s hard to believe the glow would have been bright enough to make the music legible.

By: JMyint

JMyint — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:50:20 +0000

Philo Farnsworth demonstrated the first image dissector September 10, 1928 in San Francisco. He was 21 at the time but he had the original idea when he was 14. All television systems were based on his and Vladimir Zworkin’s patents. Zworkin invented the electromagnetic deflection crt in 1929. Prior to these two inventions television as we know it did not exist. There is an article on this site about Farnsworth.

By: cks2008

cks2008 — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:23:23 +0000

I think the late 1920s/early1930s, the all electronic TV system was invented. I believe the 1936 Olympics used electronic cameras.

By: jayessell

jayessell — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:33:09 +0000

We in the 21st century can’t imagine television without a CRT.
Now, you don’t have to!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DFcYRxFdTI

When did the image pickup become all electronic?
At first they had to wear clownish makeup due to the weird color sensitivity
of the tube.

By: Al Bear

Al Bear — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:49:59 +0000

Beautiful!

By: Anne

Anne — Thu, 22 May 2008 12:21:55 +0000

I’m sure they were in the same room so they could see what was going on and be able to play the right music at the right time. TV screens were, what, tiny things? (5-10 inches in a huge cabinet?) Having them in another room, watching those tiny TVs would have been fairly inefficient, I think.

By: Casandro

Casandro — Thu, 22 May 2008 06:41:17 +0000

Ohh, is that a flying spot scanner in the background? Those were commonly used for television in some countries. They were the ones that required total darkness in the studio.

However what I wonder is: Why didn’t they just place the musicians in another room?