Word: geigers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...thing a radioactive world needs is a good "atom-sized" Geiger counter. Last week the University of Chicago proudly displayed a handy, hip-pocket model. The new gadget is so easy to read that anybody can tell when his surroundings become dangerously radioactive...
Unlike the standard Geiger counter, which may record radiation by a series of clicks, the pocket model does its recording on a lighted scale. The user just presses a button; if the fiber moves across the scale, he can be pretty sure that he is being bombarded by unhealthy radiation...
...oldest baubles, the diamond, may help protect him against his newest peril. This week the U.S. Bureau of Standards announced that diamonds, size for size, are 1,000 times more sensitive to dangerous radiation than the famous Geiger counter...
...diamond acts very much like a Geiger counter, whose knocked-free electrons dart across a partial vacuum. But the Bureau's diamond counter will last longer, and it can be made much smaller than a Geiger counter. The little sensitive crystal can be tucked away in industrial equipment, or even inside the human body to measure the penetration of radiation, as in the X-ray treatment of cancer...
Roosevelt was not only surrounded by Secret Service but often preceded by Geiger counters (to determine the possible presence of radioactivity) and usually shielded by a special speakers' stand which, when a button was pressed, threw up a sheet of armored steel. Says Agent Reilly: "I lived in horror of the day an Agent would accidentally press the remote control button and F.D.R. would find himself talking to a piece of steel where a moment before he had been addressing thousands of people. He wouldn't have been amused; there were very few things F.D.R. enjoyed more than...