By Andrew Liszewski
The atomic bomb can probably be considered one of the greatest ‘gadgets’ of all time and while we’ve all seen movies and pictures of the ominous mushroom cloud I doubt many of us have seen photos of the blast like these.
Harold Edgerton built a special lens 10 feet long for his camera which was set up in a bunker 7 miles from the source of the blast which was triggered Nevada – the bomb placed atop a steel gantry anchored to the desert floor by guide wires. The exposures are at 1/100,000,000ths of a second.
There are some slightly larger versions of these photos (with descriptions) on OddPeak.com and another shot taken slightly earlier than the above two. If anyone knows where I can find larger versions of these photos please post a link in the comments.
Thanks to Joe who submitted this link to some slightly larger versions.
[Amazing Photos of an Atomic Blast (taken at 1/1000,000,000 of-a-second) @ OddPeak.com]
just a bit larger
http://www.nevadasurveyor.com/atomicbomb/
According to the second link, the images were taken at 1/10,000’th of a second (100us, AKA 1/10th of a ms), not a nanosecond which AFAIK was not possible back in Edgerton’s day. 100us is probably the right number.
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Tsspike1.jpg
http://www.cynical-c.com/archives/bloggraphics/atom3.jpg
Although the pictures are aesthetically appealing, I’d rather not have the atomic bomb be called one of the greatest gadgets.
I think I’ve somewhere seen a book published with similar pictures.