Radium bromide Institute had four grams of radium total, which at the time was more than half the world supply. Countries all over the world set out to make as much radium as possible, a time consuming and expensive task. It was reported in "Science" magazine in 1919 that the United States had produced approximately 55 grams of radium since 1913, which was also more than half the radium produced in the world at the time. A principal source for radium is pitchblende, which holds a total of 257 mg of radium per ton of UO. Obviously with so little product recovered
Radium Biraco, a subsidiary company of Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK) in its Olen plant in Belgium. The common historical unit for radioactivity, the curie, is based on the radioactivity of Ra. Radium was formerly used in self-luminous paints for watches, nuclear panels, aircraft switches, clocks, and instrument dials. A typical self-luminous watch that uses radium paint contains around 1 microgram of radium. In the mid-1920s, a lawsuit was filed against the United States Radium Corporation by five dying "Radium Girls" – dial painters who had painted radium-based luminous paint on the dials of watches and clocks. The dial painters