My dream of safely pooping in the dark is still in the future then. 
I suppose you might be able to make safe glow-in-the-dark food by completely encasing the glowing material in something transparent and inert, like tiny glass pellets or something.
Link to a good podcast: Stuff You Missed in History Class episode on the history of the radium and “Radium Girls” who were the ones who painted the glowing chemicals on the watches. It’s a very interesting look at what happened to them and their impact on labor relations in America:
compact Florescent Device, AKA CFL, compact florescent light.
Bump.
I was looking at an old comic and saw an ad for an “American Ranger Glowlight” toy. I’ve been able to find other versions of the ad from 1946, but no in-depth discussion of it. So what do you think, radium?
Here’s a direct link to the ad. Love the line in the ad “For Every Real American Boy and Girl!”
It says that they are sold on eBay, but a search of even completed listings worldwide turns up nothing.
The ad seems to contradict itself. It points out how faint it is but shows things like it being used as a flashlight to light up a dog. Neither a phosphorescent or radium device would produce a useful beam. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was radium based.
It wouldn’t take much to give enough of a light for dark-adjusted eyes to see it at several feet. Waving your hand in front of it could be the means to do the Morse code.
I’m having a hard time reading most of the text in that ad, and can’t see any way to get a bigger version.
Those old comic book ads were notorious for grossly exaggerating the capabilities of the product, like the “X-ray Specs” with drawings showing the wearer able to see through clothing, or the “Sea Monkeys” with drawings showing anthropomorphic creatures with two arms and two legs. I would put not assume that a drawing showing a beam of light being emitted indicates anything at all about the product. My guess is that this is just a phosphorescent disk on a handle. A radium-based product would be more expensive to manufacture and wouldn’t sell any better. Also the dangers of radium were well-known even by the 1950s and I wouldn’t think a product containing that much radium could be sold.
Given that the ad says that it’s “easy to make”, I’m guessing that they just ship you the disk, and tell you to make your own handle.
When I was little, my older brother had a skull that glowed green for about ten minutes after being exposed to light. He used to sneak into my room and scare me with it. LOL
In the Archive.org link? The magnifying glasses with plus and minus in them. And you can right click/view image to see the image alone. The resolution is pretty high.
(BTW, the $1.00 for one, $1.75 for two is equivalent to $13.13 and $22.98 today, so not cheap.)
So y’all figured this out. Can someone tell me how/why a Strawberry Shortcake doll I have still smells like strawberries? She over 25 years old. I opened a box she’s in and the aroma hit me in the face.
Didn’t notice the “easy to build” part of the ad. Yeah, presumably it’s just a glow disk and maybe a piece of cardboard or two. Something that would pack flat in an envelope.
Also, the disk is probably very tiny.
The ads in those days were definitely misleading.
Well, you could use the thing in your Polaris submarine.
They were made with radioactive strawberries.
Strawberry Man! Strawberry Man! Does whatever a strawberry can!
If the Strawberry Shortcake doll was kept in a box, that’d help. The scent would have more chance to dissipate if she were sitting out on a shelf.
And some smells are just really persistent, due to the low volatility of the smelly substance. Ever noticed the smell of coal tar from old railroad ties in hot weather? Not to mention the pieces of stinkstone I used to pick up as a kid: exposed to wind and weather since the last ice age they still retained the smell of Precambrian petroleum!
Some years ago my brother worked at a factory that made watch and clock faces. During WW2 they made the luminous dials for Spitfires and Hurricanes. The luminous parts were radium and were painted on by hand. As said above, radium is pretty safe if handled correctly, but the painters were in the habit of sucking the brushes to get a better point. Many of them suffered hideously disfiguring cancers of the mouth and jaw.