Cylindrical steel container for housing radium needles during 2nd World War air raids. Originally used at Pembury Hospital Radiography Unit (Kent)

It was the practice, during air raids in the Second World War, for radium needles and tubes to be placed in steel cylinders. In the event of the room or building housing the radium being hit by a bomb, the entire cylinder along with its contents would not be destroyed.

This practice worked, with one such cylinder at University College surviving an air raid, where it was blown out of a room, across a courtyard and into a ground floor window, where the building promptly collapsed on top of it.