Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Miscellaneous: Mine Spring School,
a radiation record and making gold

Here are a trio of quick-hit pieces of ephemera for your enjoyment today...

A teacher from Mine Spring School


I came across a 1927 edition of "Hamilton's Essentials of Arithmetic, First Book" that has the name of the former owner carefully inscribed on the first page:

Mr. Ralph Lee Combs
Mine Spring School
G.G.D. Teacher. Needmore, W.Va.

I can't find much about either Mr. Combs or Mine Spring School (which is long gone), so we can chalk them both up as mysteries for now...

Personal radiation exposure record



This (thankfully) unused card from the New York State Electric & Gas Corporation in the 1960s was intended for the recording of an individual's exposure to unshielded radiation.

The whole idea of "permissible radiation dose under emergency conditions" is a bit sobering, of course.

Atom-Smashers and gold


Here's the third and final science story that caught my eye in the October 1935 issues of the St. Paul (Minn.) Dispatch. (Story #1 is here and Story #2 is here.)

This story tells of atom-smashers, the possibility of "making" gold, alchemy, sub-atomic particles and artificial radioactivity.

Fun stuff! But if they messed around too much, they probably ended up needing a personal radiation exposure record...

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