 | In the glory days of atomic energy in the early 1950s, the A. C. Gilbert Company released The Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab. It was sold only briefly between 1950 to 1952, but has since become an iconic collectible. The kit came with four different types of uranium ore, a geiger counter, a miniature cloud chamber, an electroscope, a spinthariscope and an educational comic book called 'Learn How Dagwood Splits the Atom!' |
| Whatever most of those instruments are doesn't matter to most, but when you tell people it came with actual radioactive materials, they are often dumbfounded. Yeah sure they were in ore form, and so were not highly dangerous. Little Tommy wasn't going to be making a nuclear bomb from them, but still this was a toy science lab for kids that did have a element of danger. Something no parent these days would even contemplate, in a world where we pretty much wrap our kids in cotton wool. The Atomic Energy Lab originally sold for $49.50 (around $500 in today's money). The set included radioactive samples (alpha, beta and gamma), as well as uranium ore samples. |  |
The set also included the book "Prospecting for Uranium", which encouraged people to go looking for uranium, with the incentive of payment of up to $10,000 from the US Government. Encouraging little Tommy to set out into the wilds in search of rocks of uranium, to sell to the government for cold hard cash.
Sets now sell for anything between 3 to 10 times their original value, depending on their condition.
Sets now sell for anything between 3 to 10 times their original value, depending on their condition.
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Because the radioactive sources only have a finite life, the instruction manual came with a handy re-order form on the back cover. I do love the part on the form that states, "No request for radioactive source replacement can be honored by the A. C. Gilbert Company unless it is accompanied by the [easily copied] coupon below". That's right, little would be terrorists could order their radioactive material by mail order.
