11/10/2023 0 Comments Best luminous paint for watches![]() Despite growing knowledge of the dangers of radium in the 1920s, radium was still used in watchmaking under new safety protocols. Radium use caused radiation poisoning among factory workers. Rolex GMT-Master ref 6542 with Bakelite Bezel (photo: Sotheby’s) In the early 1900s, radium was thought to be a natural ‘cure-all’ and humans ingested it. In their defense, radium’s dangers weren’t understood until the 1920s. Rolex, like many other watchmakers, did suffer from their employees using radium-based paints. Radium was the first luminous product used by Rolex and was used on any Rolex watch with lume from the 1900s until 1963, when usage was halted due to radium’s carcinogenic effects. Many collectors use a Geiger counter on vintage watches to determine if the lume is original or not. Even the slightest contact with the lume during service can shatter the fragile radium and lacquer composition. It is very difficult to work with and you’ll find that any vintage watches more than likely had their lume replaced over time. Radium lume has a distinct orange ochre color and is raised on the dial. Rolex Submariner ref 6538 with radium luminescence (photo: Christie’s) It’s produced as a by product of the element radium, which was once used in watches and other devices for its glowing properties. Radium is a radioactive substance that was used to make luminous paint. In this article, we’ll explore each type so that you can understand how to tell them apart when shopping for your Rolex timepiece. Rolex has used several types of luminescence over the years before developing their own. While Rolex’s first watches did have any lume on the hands or dials of the watch, they added the first luminous paint to some of their military pocket watches in the early 1900s. ![]() Luminescence is important because it makes your watch readable in any environment, light or dark. Over the years, one of the elements that Rolex has worked on producing in-house is their own luminescent material. One thing that sets Rolex apart from other watchmakers is their ability to manufacture their own raw materials and patent their own technologies. Originally used on watch faces, it was intended to help WWI soldiers tell time in the dark without having to strike a match that could give away their position in the trenches.Rolex is known for creating some of the most iconic watches in the world. ![]() A quick search pointed toward a luminous paint containing radium that was called Undark. Sumner wrote the song, which won a Lennon Award in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest in 2021, after hearing Joanna Newsom’s “Time (As A Symptom),” Sumner encountered a word she’d never heard before, one that stood out among a list of words written in a stream-of-consciousness style: undarked. In a time where major US companies and warehouses continue to exploit workers and risk their health for profit, the story of the Radium Girls is one we cannot afford to forget.” I took my urge to shout their story from rooftops and focused it into crafting a ballad to honor and share their plight. “It had been nearly a hunded years since radium dial companies started cropping up. “To this day it boils my blood to think about what happened to these women, but the day I first read about them I was absolutely livid,” Sumner says. It’s a story the larger public is clearly ready to hear: the song has amassed nearly 100,000 views on TikTok this week. Featured this week in a Library of Congress exhibit focusing on Labor Day and released today, Rachel Sumner’s “Radium Girls (Curie Eleison)” tells the story of these brave women, often absent from most history books. NEW YORK-September 1, 2023- In case it’s a lesson you’re not familiar with, the Radium Girls of the 1920s changed history: after radium dial companies knowingly exposed the young factory workers to radium poisoning, the women’s cases led to landmark labor laws and standards, and can even be said to have led to the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). ![]()
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