SUMMARYMercury power, held resources, and whose radium (Nov 6, 2026; user drop). MERCURY AS POWER, Record: mercury-vapor turbines ran US power plants. Hartford (1922, uprated to 15 MW by 1949), Kearny NJ (1933, 20 MW mercury plus 30 MW steam), Schiller Station NH (1950, 40 MW); designer W. L. Emmet (GE). Mercury boiled at about 880°F drove a turbine, then its heat raised steam for a second turbine. The mercury is the working fluid; fire supplies the heat. Pattern: King Bhoja's Samarangana Sutradhara (11th c.) describes heating mercury over fire to power a flying machine, the same principle (fire heats mercury, mercury moves the machine)
OPENan ancient mercury engine; none found. HELD RESOURCES, Record: the rare earths aren't rare in the crust (USGS); cerium is about as common as copper. China's 2010 export limits made them scarce. De Beers held diamond stockpiles to hold up the price. Executive Order 6102 (Apr 5, 1933) made US citizens hand in their gold. Union Minière (Belgian Congo) held a virtual world uranium monopoly by 1926. Its Olen refinery was the first industrial radium plant; Le Radium Belge (1923) sold the Congo's radium. Shinkolobwe's pitchblende (about 65% uranium) supplied most of the Manhattan Project's uranium (about 1,500 tonnes sold Sept 18, 1942). Physics caveat: radium is truly rare (P757); market control sets the price on top of that. WHOSE RADIUM, Record: radium came out of Indigenous and African lands. Colorado Plateau carnotite (Ute homelands; US supplied most of the world's radium c. 1913–22, verify). Katanga, Congo (from 1922). Port Radium, Great Bear Lake, Sahtu Dene land (Eldorado mine, 1932; radium about $40,000 a gram). Sahtu Dene men carried the ore sacks; Délı̨nę became known as the "Village of Widows." Record (oral tradition, verify): the Dene prophet Louis Ayah (Ehtséo) foresaw strangers digging a hole and a weapon falling on people who looked like the Dene. A Délı̨nę delegation went to Hiroshima in 1998. Lens (user): "Radium was ours." The ore was dug from our lands by our people; others took the credit and the money.