However, there is a very simple and quite spectacular way to identify it: place the object in a dark room, illuminate it with an ultraviolet beam, and you should then see it begin to shine with an intense green glow. While the excitement of electrons in the glass causes its fluorescence.
The origin of the name ouraline » remains uncertain to this day, but since its invention, this uranium-enriched glass has acquired another name that collectors willingly use: « vaseline glass ” Where ” glass of Vaseline “, in reference to the cream from which it borrows the color (at the time of a light yellow slightly green) and, sometimes, the oily aspect. Throughout history and the brands that have appropriated it, this material also responded to the name of uran glass, lemon glass, custard, florentine, jasmine, mustard, golden green and many more. Depression glass, produced during the economic crisis of the 1930s, used oxide of do to enhance its green tint, while Burmese glass uses colloidal gold to achieve its milky appearance, delicate variations of cream and pale pink.īut if you argue with purists, remember: there is only one real glass of Vaseline, and the rest are only pale imitations. Transparent, most often almost fluorescent yellow, its proportion of uranium generally varies between 0.1 and 2%, even if it can climb up to 25% for objects produced in the middle of the 19th century. e century! We often find the uraline exhibited in cabinets with a source of black light (or Wood’s light, a form of lighting that satisfactorily imitates UV radiation), allowing collectors to impress their visitors. informed and perhaps to somewhat terrorize uninitiated radiophobes. Before wondering if it is not reckless to fill your house with radioactive objects, let’s take a moment to look at the history of this funny invention. The origins of uralinĪlthough the uraline only took off in the 19th e century, the first traces of uranium glass date back to the year 79 of our era. It is indeed within an ancient mosaic, discovered in the villa of Pausilypon (in the Gulf of Naples) in 1911, that the researcher RT Gunther noticed several squares of pale green glass whose analysis revealed that they contained approximately 1% uranium oxide. A surprise when you know how difficult uranium is to extract from pitchblende (the main ore for this radioactive element), leading some researchers to think that it could rather come from autunite, on which it is much easier to sample.įrom 1565, pitchblende is extracted from the Ore Mountains in central Europe, where it is used as a dye in industry canopy. But it is to two people in particular that we owe the birth and then the advent of the uraline. It will take another twenty years before Franz Xavier Anton Riedel (member of a long line of glassmakers in practice for more than 260 years) is unable to produce two types of glasses fluorescents in 1830: a green which he baptized Eleonorengrün and a yellow which he gave the name of Annagelb, in tribute to his daughters Anna-Maria and Eleonora.įirst Marin Heinrich Klaproth, who discovered uranium in 1789 and then described the use of uranium oxide as a colorant for glass and porcelain 18 years later.
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