Uranium glass glowing under ultraviolet light.

Uranium Glass

Uranium glass is glass which has had uranium added to a glass mix before melting for coloration.  The proportion usually varies from trace levels to about 2% uranium by weight, although some 20th-century pieces were made with up to 25% uranium.

First identified in 1789 by German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1743-1817), uranium was soon being added to decorative glass for its fluorescent effect.  

Uranium glass was made into tableware and household items, but fell out of widespread use when the availability of uranium to most industries was sharply curtailed during the Cold War.  Most uranium glass is now considered to be antiques or retro-era collectables, although there has been a minor revival in art glassware.  

Vaseline Glass is a particular color of yellow-green glass.  Not all yellow-green glass will turn florescent green with a UV light is shined on it.  "If it doesn't glow green, it's not vaseline glass.  Vasline glass was primarily made from 1840, up to just before WWII and then was continued from 1959 to the present.  Vaseline glass was in its heyday during rhe Victorian period from the 1880s to the 1920s.  Most green depression glass wil glow.