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You're probably thinking of polonium record cleaning brushes sold by staticmaster. Its an interesting case study in planned obsolescence, the radioactive half
by VLM 6y ago
You're probably thinking of polonium record cleaning brushes sold by staticmaster.
Its an interesting case study in planned obsolescence, the radioactive half life being only a hundred days the anti-static effectiveness of the brush would completely disappear a couple years after manufacture, requiring the purchase of yet another brush.
Electronic / ham radio people would sometimes use staticmaster brushes in the winter when soldering RF preamp FET transistors to try and eliminate transistor-destroying static charge; I was never personally a believer in that technique at least at the amateur level.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoThank you! That was driving me crazy. And now I see why I got confused: it's another phonograph-related dangerous-element fact that I learned from reading Theodore Gray's book, The Elements [0] [1]. Now if I could only remember why I thought neutron beams were involved... [0] https://theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Elements/084/index.s7.html https://theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Elements/084/index.s7... [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011IZNWZU https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011IZNWZU