tomvox1
122
Fantastic and important post, as well as beautifully written--bravo!
Mar 04, 2015,14:06 PM
And thanks to Roberto for giving me the heads up!
John Harris has been banging this same drum for a while now and when the Geiger originally surfaced a few years back as the new tool of choice for collectors, certain men of science such as Keith C. and others warned that it was inherently unreliable, not to mention that the consumer versions would not detect alpha.But obviously your essay here really drives the point home with tons of supporting evidence. Marcello must be dancing a jig.
Just a couple of quick thoughts in no particular order:
--With the full understanding that the Geiger is massively imprecise... Why oh why does everyone Geiger their dials with the plexi on?!? People are always photographing their dials without the plexi? Why not Geiger the same way? I know, still not super scientific but if you're trying to measure radiation that has a hard time penetrating paper why not take the plexi off???
--Rolex themselves originally marketed their Sports watches from the 50s (GMT, Sub, Explorer) as "Super Luminous" so one may infer that the luminous compound is somehow different/brighter than a standard dress model of the same period like a Datejust, and not just bigger plots.
--The other key factor in Philip's Universo hands document is the simple conclusion that hands could be made of different luminous materials than the dials. For example if, say, Eggli & Weibel were having their dials' luminous plots applied by Merz & Bentelli (again a John Harris discovery) Universo may not have been using the same vendor to lume their hands, if indeed Universo outsourced that process at all. It's even possible that at certain times later in the 1960s you could have Tritium dials with Radium hands. After all, this document is still hawking Radium hands in 1962 when they probably should have been taking about the new and improved Trit hands. Either way, this would also contribute to variation between the same timepieces in terms of their present day radioactivity (along with the rest of the caveats you list).
--The other $64k question for me would be this one: Was Rolex definitely using Tritium-based luminous on all their dials that were marked T for Tritium beginning in late 63/early 64 onwards? Sounds a strange question I know and obviously my assumption is: Why mark a dial T for Tritium and then not use Trit lume? But then Rolex is a strange company and the US and European standards would not dovetail until later in the 1960s. I have heard some collectors express doubts that Rolex were really complying with the new US standard as early as 1963-4 despite the new T markings. For me T<25 originates from the 1960 US AEC standard and Rolex began so marking certain of their Sports/super luminous dials by late 63 because of that imperative, originally in a hastily added fashion (silver T<25 added to already printed SWISS-only gilt dials). And even if the European standards didn't phase out Radium lume until later in the 60s all European Rolex are still marked T and T<25 from 1964 on so they must be Tritium too, mustn't they? But then, that's yet another thing to test...
--Finally, I agree 100%: the only real way to find out what's in the lume of these watches -- any contested watches including Underline and early T<25 -- is via particle analysis. And even then you'd need a decent sample size, as you point out. Sooooo... who's volunteering their watches for that?
In any case, this was a brilliant read and a very valuable contribution to the entire debate. It definitely proves once and for all that one can't put all of one's eggs in the Geiger basket.
Thanks very much for all the hard work & best regards,
Tom