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The Censored Chapter (1946)

An article of mine (“A Tale of Openness and Secrecy: The Philadelphia Story”) has recently been published in Physics Today. Even better, the article has been made available for free on the Physics...

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James Conant’s Atomic Bomb Sketch? (1943)

I had fun with the little visual mystery I posted last Friday, so here’s another one I’ve been chewing over for awhile. Drawings of “official” atomic bomb designs are rare. (Where “official” means...

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What If Truman Hadn’t Ordered the H-bomb Crash Program?

The debate over the hydrogen bomb is one of my favorite Cold War episodes. I keep coming back to it, both on the blog and in my research. I’d posit that it is in many ways a lot more interesting than...

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Bethe on SUNSHINE and Fallout (1954)

Project SUNSHINE definitely takes the prize for “most intentionally-misleading title of a government program.” The goal of SUNSHINE (co-sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission and RAND) was to figure...

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King of the Wild Frontier

Of all of the many silly names for nuclear weapons system that have been given, Davy Crockett has got to be one of the odder ones, in my view.1 The “Davy Crockett” was a nuclear weapons system using...

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Forbidden spheres

Spheres are special shapes for nuclear weapons designers. Most nuclear weapons have, somewhere in them, that spheres-within-spheres arrangement of the implosion nuclear weapon design. You don’t have to...

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Clik here to view.

Soviet drawings of an American bomb

The United States government is pretty gun-shy on publishing drawings of nuclear weapon designs, even very crude ones. When it comes to implosion bombs, this is about all that’s allowed to come out of...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Advertising for weapons designers

Advertising, annoying as it is in the present, is a great tool for looking at the past. You really do get a sense for what passed as acceptable, who people thought the ideal consumer was, and what kind...

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Clik here to view.

George Gamow and the atomic bomb

George Gamow stands out as a colorful physicist among a generation of colorful physicists. He was a known wit, a friend to many of the “golden generation” of physicists, and — on top of all that — was...

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Clik here to view.

More nuclear symbolism

Two small graphical things I wanted to share that came from feedback on a few recent posts. The first is an explanation, of sorts, of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority’s very unusual emblem: I...

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Clik here to view.

Castle Bravo revisited

No single nuclear weapons test did more to establish the grim realities of the thermonuclear age than Castle BRAVO. On March 1, 1954, it was the highest yield test in the United States’ highest-yield...

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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

James Conant’s Atomic Bomb Sketch? (1943)

I had fun with the little visual mystery I posted last Friday, so here’s another one I’ve been chewing over for awhile. Drawings of “official” atomic bomb designs are rare. (Where “official” means...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

What If Truman Hadn’t Ordered the H-bomb Crash Program?

The debate over the hydrogen bomb is one of my favorite Cold War episodes. I keep coming back to it, both on the blog and in my research. I’d posit that it is in many ways a lot more interesting than...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Bethe on SUNSHINE and Fallout (1954)

Project SUNSHINE definitely takes the prize for “most intentionally-misleading title of a government program.” The goal of SUNSHINE (co-sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission and RAND) was to figure...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

King of the Wild Frontier

Of all of the many silly names for nuclear weapons system that have been given, Davy Crockett has got to be one of the odder ones, in my view.1 The “Davy Crockett” was a nuclear weapons system using...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Forbidden spheres

Spheres are special shapes for nuclear weapons designers. Most nuclear weapons have, somewhere in them, that spheres-within-spheres arrangement of the implosion nuclear weapon design. You don’t have to...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Soviet drawings of an American bomb

The United States government is pretty gun-shy on publishing drawings of nuclear weapon designs, even very crude ones. When it comes to implosion bombs, this is about all that’s allowed to come out of...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Advertising for weapons designers

Advertising, annoying as it is in the present, is a great tool for looking at the past. You really do get a sense for what passed as acceptable, who people thought the ideal consumer was, and what kind...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

George Gamow and the atomic bomb

George Gamow stands out as a colorful physicist among a generation of colorful physicists. He was a known wit, a friend to many of the “golden generation” of physicists, and — on top of all that — was...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

More nuclear symbolism

Two small graphical things I wanted to share that came from feedback on a few recent posts. The first is an explanation, of sorts, of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority’s very unusual emblem: I...

View Article
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