This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 10/10/2020
ROSE, William Ganson; HOHNHORST, Harry, illus. The Radium Book. [Cleveland/Akron: The Rose Publishing Co./The Saalfield Publishing Co., 1905]. 4to. Second edition. Four full-page “radium pictures” (including title) which the reader was supposed to hold up to a source of light and then look at in the dark, several intertextual vignettes. Publisher’s purple cloth backed pictorial boards, blue and silver pictorial endpapers (boards rubbed with dampstaining to lower board affecting rear endpapers, finger soiling to margins, occasional offsetting). RARE. OCLC locates only 4 copies in any institution. We could not locate any copies offered at auction in the past 100 years. A curious glow-in-the-dark novelty that incorporated self-luminous paint consisting of a small amount of a radioactive isotope that would emit radiation particles causing them to emit visible light.