"A New Radio-Activity" 1920 1st Edition Organic Radium Start Price GBP 45.00 Current Price GBP 45.00 Time Left - Bid Count 0 Buy It Now Price - Reserve Price - Start Time Thursday, October 02, 2008 End Time Sunday, October 12, 2008 Location City of Edinburgh See more about '"A New Radio-Activity" 1920 1st Edition Organic Radium ' Description "A New Radio-Activity" 1920 1st Edition Organic Radium "A New Activity?" A Treatise on Mrs. Duckinson's Discovery of a "New Radio-Activity" (With some notes on Radium) by Frank A. Hotblack. With a Forward by Alfred W. Oke. Published by Jarrolds Ltd London. Sept. 1920 1st Edition.CONTENTSPART I. RADIUMI. Its Origin - Its Scientific Properties and Characters - Other Radio-Active Elements - Radium, Radio-Active Elements, Their Uses, etcPART II. THE "NEW ACTIVITY" or DICKINSON ORGANIC RADIUMI. Its History - Its Scientific Properties and Characters - The Known Radio-active Elements, or A New Radio-activity? A ComparisonII. Its Wide Commercial ValueAppendix.Bona-fide Letters, Miscellaneous Notes, Reports, Tables, Testimonials, etcILLUSTRATIONSMrs Dickinson (frontpiece)The Elements - Their Symbols and Atomic WeightsThe Periodic Series of the Elements, from MendeleefThe Deviation of the Radium Rays in a Magnetic FieldThe Radio-active Elements - their Emanations, Rays, etcA Family Tree of the Radio-active Families, from J. CozA Table showing the relationship between Quantity and Average Life of all the Transition Forms existing as Products of UraniumWhere Mrs. Dickinson's Radio-Activity was discoveredA Radio-active CrystalPhotographic Effects (various)The Writer's home-made SpinthariscopeLines and Markings on Glass (various)A curious Radio-active EffectAn Effect produced in GlassRadio-active WaterYeastless BreadCorroded and De-corroded Sections of Metal PipingThe De-inking and Pulping of NewspaperA Sheepskin (dirty, and washed) 7 1/2 by 5 inches. Hardback in brown cloth. 196 pages plus 2 pages of book ads. Bumping to board corners and a few knocks to board edges. Discolouration to endpapers and some light foxing to contents. Gutter seperation with old repair to page 71 but holding firm. From the Institute of Physics website - Journal of Radiological Protection, vol. 16. Editorial by Geoff Megitt :It is just possible that you have not heard of Mrs M Dickinson of 159 Marine Parade, Kemp Town, Brighton. This would be rather a pity because Mrs Dickinson discovered radioleum (otherwise Organic Radium) in 1913.In a neat little book called A New Activity? written by one Frank A Hotblack and published by Jarrolds of London (195 pages and 18 B/W plates) the story and properties of radioleum are recounted. The frontispiece is a photograph of Mrs Dickinson in a well-filled pinstripe suit with a wry smile, a couple of medals, a fur stole, a plumed hat and her thumb in her jacket pocket. The text (endorsed incidentally by Alfred W Oke BA LLM FCS FGS ETC) first of all gives a reasonable account for the time - 1920 - of the nature and properties of radium and then moves on to its main theme, the matter of Mrs D.After the death of her husband she began, in 1911, her researches into the `perfect antiseptic'. Although born in Somerset and raised in Iowa Mrs D had travelled widely in the East and been impressed by the healing, health-giving and preserving qualities of vegetable oils. She developed from these, using inter alia the oils of cinnabar and Silvester, an antiseptic perfume which she gave the alluring name `Dongor' in memory of the late Mr Dickinson. While working on an allied product in 1913 - an Antiseptic Medical Cream-Soap - under the general guidance of some ancient Egyptian texts, she noticed that there was a precipitation of tiny reddish-brown particles on the surface and immediately cried `Radium!'. She showed these to her intimates and to a knowledgeable journalist, Mr Cayley Calvert, who remarked that they looked like pitchblende. (How many journalists today would recognise a fragment of pitchblende, one might demand.) A `head chemist' said, with remarkable insight, that they looked like refined pitchblende, while a more romantic colleague thought they resembled Mount Vesuvius erupting. Mrs D, in a subsequent experiment with a Bunsen burner, caused an explosion that converted these rather pedestrian crystals into sparkling, adamantine ones and discovered that these had remarkable properties that were in a strange way reminiscent of radium - only more so. Mr D's name was Gordon in case you were wondering.In the book the properties of the crystals are elaborated in some detail but here we must be brief. They: cleaned dirty wool, had a stimulating effect on the growth of wallflowers, separated gold from arsenic, made excellent bread without yeast, caused marks on glass strangely similar to those in C T R Wilson's cloud chamber, removed scale from boilers, made better cement, made better coal, produced everlasting crystallised fruit, made hair grow, cured eczema and germinated frog spawn more quickly than nature. When sealed in a phial the crystals made water effervesce and produced a healthy drink. Some of these effects were independently witnessed. For example, W Wortley Baggally, a prominent member of the Society for Psychical Research, checked out the glass tracks.Mrs D reported her findings extensively in the journal of the Brighton and Hove Natural History and Philosophical Society. She approached a number of scientific luminaries of the time. Sir James Dewar, Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Barrett and Professor F W Keeble all commented on the discovery but in terms that were indicative of a certain reservation. Mrs Dickinson became a member of the Royal Institution on 4 December 1916, but perhaps the final word should be with Professor Wintour F Gwinnell BSc FGS of the Polytechnic College, Regent Street, who said `It is a mystery'.I bought this book some while ago and readers may believe that I should have kept that fact to myself. But it has subsequently symbolised to me the awe in which radioactivity has been held since its discovery. A menagerie of magical elements so wonderful that it was worth invoking the spirits of the Pharaohs to create something similar. Of course, the magic has become a little blacker in recent years.Geoff MeggittThanks for looking and please check out my other antiquarian titles.UK customers: I accept cheques drawn on UK banks or postal orders. I accept PayPal. The book weighs 330g. 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