Exerpts from the history of alpha recoils.
Any confined air volume holding radon ((222)Rn) gas bears a memory of past radon concentrations due to (210)Pb (T(1/2) = 22 y) and its progenies entrapped in all solid objects in the volume. The efforts of quantifying past radon exposures by means of the left-behind long-lived radon progenies started in 1987 with this author's unsuccessful trials of removing (214)Po from radon exposed glass object
