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Four Decades of Progress in 14C Dating by Liquid Scintillation Counting and Spectrometry

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Radiocarbon After Four Decades

Abstract

Liquid scintillation (LS) radiometry (the counting of nuclear emanations) has undergone continuous development since attempts were first made in the early 1950s to detect natural 14C by this method. The potential of detection of ionizing radiations from 3H, 14C and 32P, isotopes used extensively as tracers in biomedical and biological research, was the trigger that prompted the commercial development of LS counters, first by Lyle Packard, the founder of the Packard Instrument Company, USA and then by many others in the USA and Europe. Though efficient and technologically advanced for their times, the early counters had very high backgrounds and, hence, offered poor resolution of radioactive isotopes at environmental concentrations.

“Go forth and build a house of bricks” (the parent of the third little piggy)

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  1. Henry A. Polach
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Riverside, 92521-0418, Riverside, CA, USA

    R. E. Taylor

  2. Department of Geosciences, The University of Arizona, 85721, Tuscon, AZ, USA

    Austin Long  & Renee S. Kra  & 

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Polach, H.A. (1992). Four Decades of Progress in 14C Dating by Liquid Scintillation Counting and Spectrometry. In: Taylor, R.E., Long, A., Kra, R.S. (eds) Radiocarbon After Four Decades. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4249-7_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4249-7_14

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