Atomic Offspring

When Oak Ridge released the radioactive byproducts of its atomic pile for private use in 1946, few U.S. businessmen paid much attention. But to a handful of young M.I.T.-trained scientists it was big news; they were ready to cash in on the first U.S. commercial use of atomic energy. They had already pooled their $31,000 in savings to form Tracerlab, Inc., and had rented dilapidated quarters down near Boston's South Station.

By last week, Boston's radioactive, midget had chain-reacted into a million-a-year business. Tracerlab's shy, ascetic president, William E. Barbour Jr., 39, announced that with the new "Beta Gauge," an atomic method to help control production by measuring the thickness of industrial products, Tracerlab had moved from a laboratory-type company into an industrial one.

The Beta Gauge, which measures the thickness of a material by spraying it with beta particles (electrons) from a radioactive isotope and gauging their penetration, was first installed last May in Continental Paper Co.'s plant at Ridgefield Park, N.J. It worked so uncannily well that rubber, paper mills and other industries all began clamoring for it. To meet the demand, Tracerlab has tripled its space by moving into a nearby six-story building paid for out of $1,196,000 of new capital raised last spring with a stock issue. It expects to step up gauge production from the present 4 a month to 30 (at a retail price of $800 to $3,000 apiece), and expects to double last year's business. In the first six months of this year, Tracer-lab grossed $550,000 and netted $43,000.

Dilution. Tracerlab's President Barbour is an M.I.T.-trained electrical engineer who had made a killing in Massachusetts' Raytheon Manufacturing Co. stock. He risked the major part ($26,000) of Tracerlab's first capital and started making an "Autoscaler," a highly sensitive machine for hospitals and laboratories to measure radioactivity. Tracerlab also began marketing elements which had been made radioactive by insertion in the Oak Ridge atomic pile. Tracerlab put these radioactive isotopes in usable chemical forms for hospitals and laboratories.

When the company began to run out of money, Barbour found an angel in American Research & Development Corp., a venture-capital group of hardheaded New England businessmen (TIME, Aug. 19, 1946). With $150,000 of American Research's money, and the stock issue, Tracerlab was put on firm footing.

Addition. Tracerlab was soon marketing an array of 100 items. Samples: lead bricks (at $9.60 each) for protection from radioactivity; long-handled tongs ($25); "safety buttons," which warn laboratory workers when they have been exposed to dangerous radiation.

Bill Barbour has already set his gauges on bigger business radiations. Last week, with French bankers and industrialists, he set up Tracerlab's first foreign affiliate, France's "Saphymo" (for Societe d'Application de la Physique Moderne), planned to start production overseas. For next year, Barbour, cannily aware of the atomic age's "uranium rush," already has a new product on the books: a portable radiation detector for prospectors.

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