Between the 1950 and the 1951 in the United States a kit for kids containing uranium and others radioactive elements: his name was Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory was was produced by the AC Gilbert Company. Reading like this it might seem crazy but at the time they were not the only ones to create objects of this type and, above all, the causes of the withdrawal were not linked to dangerbut rather to price prohibitive. It was placed on the market with a price of $50 per package: it was a figure quite high for the time, equivalent to about $600 todayand for this reason the game was short-lived and was only sold for a year. This, over time, made him a very rare itemraising its value by up to 100 times compared to the original one. But what exactly was inside it? And was it really as dangerous to health as we might think?
What did the children’s game with radioactive elements contain
The set contained:
- four jars containing minerals of uranium from Colorado;
- a source of alpha radiation (lead-210);
- a source of beta radiation (ruthenium-106);
- a source of gamma radiation (zinc-65);
- a pushariscopethat is, a rudimentary scintillation detector;
- a Geiger counter to detect ionizing radiation.
- a Wilson cloud chamber with short-lived alpha source (polonium-210) to identify the trajectory of particles.
In addition to all this there was also a comic book in which he collaborated Leslie Groves (formerly head of the Manhattan Project), a instruction booklet 60 pages and the manual “Prospecting for Uranium“, in which the Government essentially explained how identify, collect And sell uranium ores.
Among other things, there are some of this “toy”. two different versions. The first, rarer, had a brown packaging and was advertised in the 1950 Gilbert Toys catalogue. The second version, however, is characterized by a red box but, beyond the external covering, the contents were the same – even if arranged in slightly different way. As we anticipated however, the high cost of the kitequivalent to several hundred dollars today, caused it to be quickly withdrawn from the shelves. In 1952 it was replaced by Chemistry Atomic Energy Set inside which he was present alone some uraniumone pushariscope and a book on atomic energy.
Was the Gilbert U-238 radioactive kit safe?
According to the founder of the manufacturing companythe game was absolutely safethanks to the approval of the best physicists Oak-Ridge Laboratories. At the same time, in the instruction booklet users were strongly advised to Don’t break the jars containing radioactive elements, not for health reasons however but because otherwise one would spread the radioactive materialvarying the background values. This in turn “would have altered the experimental results by negatively influencing the Geiger counter“. But not even the shadow of health warnings.
Over time, various newspapers have included this product as one of the 10 most dangerous toys ever soldalthough in reality a clearer answer on the actual danger of the product came from the IEEE Spectrum portal, which in 2020 carried out an in-depth review of the object. Allison Marshauthor of the article and professor of engineering at the University of South Carolina, stated that:
The risk of uranium-238 in Gilbert’s U-238 atomic energy laboratory was minimal, about the equivalent of a day’s exposure to the sun’s UV rays. Furthermore, the kit had the beneficial effect of teaching that radioactivity is a natural phenomenon.
