Time Capsule - Civil Defense

The basement workshop has needed attention of late.  Lots of legacy robotics stuff, Barbie Jeep parts and suchlike - must go in order to make space for new robotics components.  I imagine in a few years those will be obsolete too.  It's the way of technology.  Sic Semper Recyclo.

Plenty of oddities have turned up including this gem.  I actually can't call it a mystery,  as I know why it was down there.  As to it's earlier story, difficult to say. 

It looks like, and in fact is, a Geiger counter.

These used to be somewhat commonplace items, but now you mostly see them in old movies.  The staccato clicking when it is held up and waved around was the universal sound of Nuclear Dread back in a day when the prospects of a US/USSR holocaust were on the minds of all.

Here's a few small details that help us pin down the history of the item at hand.

Universal Atomics does not appear to exist in 2021.  I guess if I were their PR department I'd have suggested a name change a long time ago.  The parent company Universal Transistor Products Company is enigmatic.  It is still listed in Delaware as an "INACTIVE AGENT ACCOUNT".  I find other mentions of it as an active concern and as a "FOREIGN BUSINESS CORPORATION".  This degree of opacity has a rather CIA/SpookCorp vibe to it.  Perhaps their HQ is under a volcano on some remote island.

A small plate on the unit suggests that it contains a RADIO-ACTIVE SOURCE.    You wonder what sort of less subtle warnings would have to go on it today.  Interestingly my understanding of Geiger counters and what info I can locate suggests that there is no radioactive material built into them, just inert gases that generate a charge when high energy particles cross them.

Geiger counters of course refer to the man who invented the technology that went into them, a certain Hans Geiger.  His story is fairly typical of German scientists of that era.  It's complicated.  Before WW I he traveled and corresponded freely.  He did graduate work in Manchester England and helped his boss, Ernest Rutherford, win the Nobel prize.  

A keen mind able to figure out the trajectory of very tiny objects would be expected to excel at helping plot the course of larger ones.  So Geiger served as an artillery officer in the German Army from 1914 to 1918.  Who knows, he may have directed some of the shells we dug up at Hill 80.  His health suffered from the effects of trench warfare but post war he went back into active research.  He on the one hand signed a letter objecting to Hitler's policies regarding academia.  But he also dabbled for a while with efforts to develop a German atomic bomb program.  He survived the battle for Berlin at the end of the war but died before the tumultuous year 1945 was over.

And what came after?  The Cold War.  Russia picking the bones of the German rocketry and atomic programs to build a counterweight to the Manhattan Project.  Creepy, dystopic black and white SciFi movies.  Red Scares and McCarthyism.  Hot wars in Korea and other points of conflict between the two great powers.  The production of millions of Geiger counters for Civil Defense....

For those with an interest in more detail, I can say that this particular model came into being, as I did, in 1957.  It was made for about two years and is unusual in that it had a yellow plastic case; most models made by other companies being metal.  

Eventually the threat of nuclear Armageddon receded, and the electronic components in these counters deteriorated.  In the 1980's lots of them were marketed to assorted hobbyists, including those hoping to prospect for uranium.  After sitting in some Civil Defense shelter for decades I suspect this specific unit ended up at a rock and mineral show, something one of my sons used to frequent.  He's much more able technically than I, and as he has not gotten it working I will just keep it around as a colorful artifact of an anxious past.

Addendum.  After this post was finished I was idling about and watched an old episode of "Half in the Bag", the boozy movie review show put out by the mad geniuses at Red Letter Media.  (It's not for everyone, mad genius can often be offensive).  And what do you suppose I spied in the background of one of their intentionally cheesy sets?