Luminous watch dial.-Stanford.edu
The Beginning
It all started when Marie Curie discovered radium in 1898. "My beautiful radium," she had called it. Later in 1901 Dr. Sabin von Sochocky discovered formulas for radium induced paint. In 1914, with George S. Willis, he founded the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation (RLMC) where radium enhanced watch dials would be created. Sochocky changed the company's name to the United States Radium Corporation (USRC) in 1917.
“...Sochocky had met a ‘Kindred Soul’ in Willis, which suggests they were fairly close or at least similar characters.”-Kate Moore, second personal email interview.
“People used radium paint even before Von Sochocky...but he was the first properly to commercialize its use.”- Kate Moore, second personal email interview.
When America entered WW1, the need for luminous watch dials increased as soldiers needed to surreptitiously see their watch faces, and USRC saw a chance to hire. During the early 1900s, radium had increased in popularity due to its supposed health benefits. Radium was added to water, makeup and more. These radium induced products were only bought by the rich due to their high costs. Most girls couldn't afford the products but believed in radium's positive effects, and they were soon hired by USRC. Their work consisted of painting watch dials with radium paint called Undark. While painting, they used thin brushes and licked the brushes they utilized to obtain a fine point. Older dial painters taught them this procedure. They called it the Lip, Dip Paint method.
“The procedure required the women to smooth
their camel-hair paint brushes in their mouths, a process known as "pointing" or "tipping," dip the sharply pointed brush into the radioactive paint, and then paint delicate figures on the watch faces.”-Missouri Law Review
"The first thing we asked was, 'Does this stuff hurt you?' And they said, 'No.'"-Mae Cubberly, The Radium Girls (8).
The girls marveled at the fact that, after their daily work, they would glow in the dark from radium paint on their clothes.
"“When I would go home at night, my clothing would shine in the dark. You could see where I was.”-Edna Bolz, The Radium Girls (20-21).
While the girls worked without protection, happily licking radium-contained brushes and painting their faces to appear radiant, men working at the factories were equipped with lead aprons and masks to prevent exposure to radium, working in separate rooms than the women.
“They [the men] were handling much larger amounts [of radium] and it was known that a large amount was hugely dangerous. They’d be refining the radium, processing it, extracting it from ore...”-Kate Moore, second personal email interview.
All the girls were aware of was they would earn large sums of money by painting watch dials daily. What they didn't know was that, years later, radium would be taking most of their lives.