You're probably thinking of polonium record cleaning brushes sold by staticmaster.
Its an interesting case study in planned obsolescence, the radioactive half life being only a hundred days the anti-static effectiveness of the brush would completely disappear a couple years after manufacture, requiring the purchase of yet another brush.
Electronic / ham radio people would sometimes use staticmaster brushes in the winter when soldering RF preamp FET transistors to try and eliminate transistor-destroying static charge; I was never personally a believer in that technique at least at the amateur level.
Re:Neutron Radiography
by DoofusOfDeath on Friday January 22, 2021 @10:07AM
(#25872233)
Thank you! That was driving me crazy. And now I see why I got confused: it's another phonograph-related dangerous-element fact that I learned from reading Theodore Gray's book, The Elements [0] [1].
Now if I could only remember why I thought neutron beams were involved...
[0] https://theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Elements/084/index.s7...
But maybe I'm remembering wrong. The closest article I can find is from Theodore Gray [0]. It talks about old phonograph needles made from osmium, which is very toxic in dust form.
[0] https://theodoregray.com/periodictable/Elements/076/index.s1...