Radiation Counter
notes: label: Description
content: Radiation counter with an inscription that reads in part “SCINTILLOMETER / MODEL NO. 939 / SERIAL NO. GJ00 7630 / PATENTS PENDG / MANUFACTURED UNDER LICENCE OF / HALROSS INSTRUMENTS / WINNIPEG CANADA.” A tag reads “USAEC / G100 / No. 7630.” The form, introduced in 1950, was the first commercially available gamma scintillator.
label: Description
content: Robert W. Pringle, the inventor of the Scintillometer, was a physicist from the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, who moved to the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg, in 1948. In early 1949, while talking with the geologist, George M. Brownell, Pringle asked if “a portable instrument that was a hundred times more sensitive than the best hand model Geiger counter” would be of any use in prospecting for uranium?” By summer, Pringle and his colleagues were testing a scintillator. And with promising results, they arranged with Halross Instruments to manufacture the device.
label: Description
content: Ref: Robert W. Pringle, Kenneth I. Roulston, and George M. Brownwell, “Improvement in Radiation Detectors,” U.S. Patent 2.686,266 (Aug. 10, 1954).
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Modern Physics
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: EM.N-08270
label: accession number
content: 243274
label: catalog number
content: MHI-N-8270
label: serial number
content: 240
label: model number
content: 939
label: catalog number
content: N-08270
objectType: label: Object Name
content: counter
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 13 1/2 in x 1304 in x 4 in; 34.29 cm x 3312.16 cm x 10.16 cm