The Story of Pittsburgh
RADIUM

Co

HEN over one hundred thousand dollars is raised
by popular subscription taken in all parts of the
country, to pay for a thimbleful of Radium to be
presented by the President of the United States, at the
White House, to Madame Curie, the discoverer of Radium,
as a gift from the women of America, there is interest in
the story of how this material is obtained, why it has this
value and what makes it of present and of future importance
to the civilization of the world.
How the United States is the foremost Radium producing
 country, and Pittsburgh is the Radium center of the
world, and how it owes this pre-eminence to the work of
one man, Joseph M. Flannery, of Pittsburgh, as distinctly
as France owes to Madame Curie, the honor of first making
Radium known to the world, are details in the story of
Radium that make an interesting chapter in the history of
the development of the natural resources of the Americas,
That Mr. Flannery gained much of the mining experience
and no small part of the money he was able to put into his
work for Radium, when he was developing the Vanadium
deposits of the Peruvian Andes, is a detail that will be of
present interest to Latin America and of permanent interest
in the full story of how the greatest supply of
Radium was made available for the benefit of the world.
In 1895, soon after the discovery of the X-rays, Professor
 Henri Becquerel, of the University of Paris, undertook
 an exhaustive study to learn whether some metals
after exposure to sunlight would shine when brought into
a dark room, and if they did, whether that light would act
as the newly discovered X-rays, that had the power to pass
through thick and light proof paper.