The Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab
Some children’s toys and games stand the test of time, others fall in and out of fashion, but some are so bizarre that, at least from today’s health and safety obsessed perspective, you wonder what the manufacturer was thinking. A perfect illustration of the latter is the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab launched in 1950.
The Gilbert was the A C Gilbert Company, based in Connecticut, that had cut its teeth in the children’s toy market with the eponymous owner’s Erector set. Despite its risqué name, especially when in the hands of the target market of young adolescent boys, it was a wholesome enough toy, launched in the 1910s, a metal construction kit, much akin to Meccano who eventually bought the rights to it in 2000.
After the Second World War, America was all aglow with radioactive pride. There were no limits to potential uses for atomic energy and what better way of introducing the youth of America to its mysteries than by replicating the success of chemistry sets. And so, the idea of the Atomic Energy lab was born.
On opening the tan case of the first edition of the lab in 1950 the lucky recipient found that they had not one but four types of uranium core, a beta-alpha source (Pb-210), a pure beta source, probably Ru-106, a gamma source (Zn-65) a spinthariscope (a device for observing individual nuclear disintegrations), a cloud chamber with its own short-lived alpha source (Po-210), an electroscope, a Geiger counter, and some literature.
In an attempt to demonstrate that the kit was child-friendly, Gilbert included a comic featuring a popular cartoon character, Dagwood, who explained the principles of atomic energy and a manual entitled Prospecting for Uranium in the hope of enticing his customers to hunt for uranium for which the US Government were offering a bounty of $10,000. The 1951 version had the same contents, but they were arranged differently, and they all came in a red case.
The child had everything they needed to set up a nuclear laboratory at home and had the thrill of watching alpha particles moving at speeds of 12,000 mph in the cloud chamber. To add some spice, the marketing material suggested that children could play hide-and-seek with the gamma-ray source.
Recognising that radioactive sources degraded over time, the set even came with a form to request replacements of the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Cloud Chamber sources. It warned, though, that no request would be honoured without a completed coupon, which should be stored in a safe place. No such warning was given about the material itself.
Perhaps mercifully, the lab was not a commercial success. What did for it was not health and safety concerns or a minor nuclear explosion in some far corner of the United States, but its cost – it retailed at $40 – and children found it all too complicated. Although there were adverts for it in 1952 and 1953, these were from stores that were trying to rid themselves of redundant stock. And so a bright idea intended to capture the zeitgeist disappeared for ever.
Gilbert’s lab was not the first. That dubious honour probably goes to the Porter Chemical Company whose 1947 Chemcraft chemistry kits, selling at $10 and $25 respectively, included “actual specimens of Uranium Ore, while the more expensive kit also provided a “radioactive screen”.
Those were the days.
