In article ,
xray wrote:

On Wed, 22 Mar 2006 20:03:09 -0600, "Martin H. Eastburn"
wrote:

The Captains and near - would be able to see better
with the radioactive lenses.

Any logical explanation for why radioactive glass (I presume thats where
the radioactivity was) would be better optically? Seems odd. The
radioactivity can't matter by itself can it?

Thorium oxide based glasses have a very different combination of
refractive index and dispersion than other glasses available at the
time, allowing better correction of optical abberations.

Thorium is only very slightly radioactive, and the health problems were
psychosomatic, not physical, for users of the resulting optical systems.
Manufacturers had to be more careful, as they were exposed to the dust
resulting from grinding lenses.

Joe Gwinn