OCR Text |
Show The American Radium Strike RADIUM was "discovered," or rather Isolated from other chemical chem-ical elements in 1S93 by the famous Polish scientist, Madame Curie, working work-ing In her laboratory in Paris. For many years prior to that time western prospectors had been noticing notic-ing the peculiar deposits of a substance sub-stance known geologically as car-notite car-notite that existed in considerable quantities in the Colorado mountains. Following the discovery of radium and the revelation that carnotite was a mineral from which radium could be extracted, once a commercial process proc-ess was found that would separate the radium at a cost that was not prohibitive, prohibi-tive, new value was placed on these Colorado claims. It remained for a Pittsburgh family by the name of Flannery to make the plunge. Headed by one of the brothers, broth-ers, Joseph Flannery, they bought up a large number of Colorado carnotite claims and began spending money In research that would show a way to get out the radium. As the years passed they came several sev-eral times almost to !be point of abandoning aban-doning this venture and are said actually ac-tually to have been ir, meeting, planning plan-ning to stop work, when. In 1913, a technical man burst into the room with the announcement that a process proc-ess had been perfected. Extraction of radium from carnotite became an Important American Industry, In-dustry, measured on the minute scale that governs where radium is concerned. con-cerned. America began to produce about 25 to 30 grams of pure radium annually. From 1913 until 1923 the Flannery radium concern dominated not only the American market but practically the world market for radium. In 1923. however, came more Important discoveries of radium In the Belgian Con-.i, There radium was produced at a cost mab below the American and In quantities approximately twlcf as large, four grams a month or r.nr ly fifty a year. Since the Congo deposits, depos-its, which come from a different ore from carnotite. have been worked the production of this rare and mysterlou.' element has stopped in the L'nltei States. I. 1957. Wtm Newspaper Union.) |