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There were two other mines that produced the same uraninite ore as the one at which Hanlon was stationed. There were three iron mines, and Hanlon was not too surprised to learn that at each of these mines smelters had been erected. He learned that humans were used mostly in the mills, the natives being used only for outside labor because they could not stand the heat.
Pitchblende or uraninite is an intensely black mineral of a specific gravity of 9.5 and is found in commercial quantities in Bohemia, Cornwall in England and some other localities. It contains lead sulphide, lime silica, and other bodies. To the radio-active substance which accompanied the bismuth extracted from pitchblende the Curies gave the name Polonium.
He thrust the frequency-transformer into a hole prepared for just such an emergency, grabbed up his shock-rod and stepped closer to the natives. He was standing there, to all appearances strictly on the job of making his charges work, when Philander came crawling up the rise into the pocket where this crew was mining the glossy, lustrous pitch-blank uraninite ore.
Many years passed before any chemical laboratory on earth was able to match this product of the great laboratory of the sun. In 1896 Ramsay at last succeeded in separating helium, recognized by the same yellow line in its spectrum, in minute quantities from the mineral uraninite.
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