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 pro- 
ducing 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, Pro- 
fessor Henri Becquerel, of the University of Paris, under- 
took 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.