[Atomic Bomb Explosion]
In the late 1930s Harold Edgerton, a professor of engineering at MIT, pioneered techniques of ultra-high-speed stroboscopic photography to reveal aspects of the moving world previously invisible to the naked eye-a speeding bullet eviscerating an apple, the graceful spiral of a golf stroke, the coronet formed by a falling drop of milk.
During World War II, Edgerton worked with the Atomic Energy Commission to develop a camera, the Rapatronic, capable of capturing the fleeting incandescent flash of a nuclear explosion. Edgerton and his assistants set up their equipment on a tower seven miles from a nuclear test site and, using exposures as short as one-billionth of a second, recorded this ominous glowing shape hovering like an alien life-form or a colossal balloon. Made when the dream of technology threatened to turn into a nightmare, Edgerton's haunting images of nuclear explosions help us visualize the inconceivable.
During World War II, Edgerton worked with the Atomic Energy Commission to develop a camera, the Rapatronic, capable of capturing the fleeting incandescent flash of a nuclear explosion. Edgerton and his assistants set up their equipment on a tower seven miles from a nuclear test site and, using exposures as short as one-billionth of a second, recorded this ominous glowing shape hovering like an alien life-form or a colossal balloon. Made when the dream of technology threatened to turn into a nightmare, Edgerton's haunting images of nuclear explosions help us visualize the inconceivable.
Artwork Details
- Title: [Atomic Bomb Explosion]
- Artist: Harold Edgerton (American, 1903–1990)
- Date: 1946–52
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: 19.2 x 24.1 cm (7 9/16 x 9 1/2 in.)
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Gift of The Harold and Esther Edgerton Family Foundation, 1997
- Object Number: 1997.62.21
- Rights and Reproduction: © MIT, Harold Edgerton, 2014, courtesy of Palm Press, Inc.
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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