The Wonders of Radium by Maynard Shipley

When radium was discovered by Mme. Curie in 1898, the effect upon the scientific world was startling, not to say "catastrophic" -- as one author wrote at the time -- since its activities ran counter to every known principle of physical science. "Some of the most solid foundations of science were destroyed, some of its noblest edifices wrecked, and scientists had to nerve themselves to face and investigate a new form of energy."

So soon as radium compounds (salts) became available, however, the amount of energy given out in radioactive processes -- the emission of powerful radiations which can be transformed into light and heat -- was measured; and it was found that radium, weight for weight, gives out as much heat as any known fuel every three days, and in the course of fifteen years releases a quantity of energy nearly 2,000 times as much as is obtained from the best fuel, with no signs of exhaustion (Soddy). In the combustion of coal, the heat evolved is sufficient to raise a weight of water some 80 to 100 times the weight of the fuel from the freezing-point to the boiling-point. The spontaneous heat from radium is sufficient to heat a quantity of water equal to the weight of radium from the freezing-point to the boiling-point every three-quarters of an hour. In other words, a pound of radium contains and evolves in its changes the same amount of energy as 100 tons or more of coal evolve in their combustion.