Lead Shields Protect Men Filming Radium Story (Jan, 1938)
Given that radioactivity was discovered by Henri Becquerel when he noticed that Uranium salts were fogging his photographic plates, you’d think the film makers would have thought of this problem ahead of time.
Lead Shields Protect Men Filming Radium Story
DURING the filming of a motion picture dramatizing the use of radium, elaborate precautions were observed to protect workers from the element’s radiations. The cameraman operated behind a lead shield featuring a glass panel, while a workman who handled the radium used flexible gauntlets of fabricated lead and wool which were attached to a special observation shield of lead and glass.
Production was almost halted when the camera film became cloudy and diffused through exposure to the radium radiations but technicians were able to develop a film suitable for the job.
Hope that table top is made of lead!
Does anyone know what the movie they are talking about is or where might I find it? I would like to kind of see it.
1) They’re both wearing lead aprons. The family jewels are protected.
2) I checked IMDB and Archive.org. No results.
Well, there’s a film at archive.org about a radium patent medicine huckster.
Search for ‘radium’ under motion pictures.
3) Could the veil of secrecy on all things atomic have already descended due to
the situation in Europe? The film surpressed or destroyed?
4) Maybe an educational film rather than a short for theatres?
Maybe made expressly for medical students?
Was there a company that refined radium for hospitals?
Could they have made it? “This is what we do and why it costs so much.”
I found a short in German… 1941.
Martin Rikli.
Oops… I mean I found a mention of a German short film named ‘Radium’. 1941.
I bet it’s the only film about Radium that doesn’t mention Ms. Curie.