They worked in unvented rooms, they wore smocks that they laundered at home. They were told that eliminating lip-pointing had ended earlier problems. Luminous Processes employees interviewed by a journalist in 1978 stated they had been left ignorant of radium's dangers. Stopping this practice drastically reduced the amount of radium ingested and therefore, the incidence of malignancy. By 1930, all dial painters stopped pointing their brushes by mouth.
The disease, radium-induced osteonecrosis, was recognized as an occupational disease in 1925 after a group of radium painters, known as the Radium Girls, from the United States Radium Corporation sued. This practice resulted in the ingestion of radium, which caused serious jaw-bone degeneration and malignancy and other dental diseases. Radium dials were typically painted by young women, who used to 'point' their brushes by licking and shaping the bristles prior to painting the fine lines and numbers on the dials. The Radiolite series, made in various sizes and models, became a signature of the Connecticut-based company. The Ingersoll Watch division of the Waterbury Clock Company, a nationally-known maker of low-cost pocket and wristwatches, was a leading popularizer of the use of radium for watch hands and indices through the introduction of their "Radiolite" watches in 1916. The use of radium to provide luminescence for hands and indices on watches soon followed.
The company later changed its name to the United States Radium Corporation. Willis founded the Radium Luminous Material Corporation. Radium was discovered by Marie and Piere Curie in 1898 and was soon combined with paint to make luminescent paint, which was applied to clocks, airplane instruments, and the like, to be able to read them in the dark. November 1917 ad for an Ingersoll "Radiolite" watch, one of the first watches mass marketed in the USA featuring a radium-illuminated dial.
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