Nuclear Museum Logo
Nuclear Museum Logo

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Cold War Nuclear Tests

Oral History
Roy Glauber’s Interview
October 18, 2016
Owen Gingerich: Professor Roy Glauber is a physicist, a physicist who had an early start in physics because when he was still an undergraduate at Harvard, it was during World War II. A mysterious caller knocked on his dormitory door, and asked him if he would want to participate in some unspecified kind of scientific […]
Oral History
Lee DuBridge’s Interview – Part 2
September 2, 2016
Lee DuBridge: So, yeah, we thought it was an exciting time to have the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission]. We knew, of course, that they were going ahead with the weapon development, but also they were going to support Brookhaven and other research centers around the country. So, no, I think those of us who were not […]
Oral History
Norris Bradbury’s Interview – Part 2
August 25, 2016
Martin Sherwin: Okay, this is the middle of an interview with Norris Bradbury. Norris Bradbury: The fact that I wasn’t particularly involved in these discussions, of the type which the Federation of Atomic Scientists started—they started here, of course. I suppose I was committed to running a laboratory and trying to get people to stay […]
Oral History
Edward Purcell’s Interview
July 12, 2016
Martin Sherwin: I think the opportunity to talk to somebody who served with him on the Harvard— Edward Purcell: Oh, Harvard, that was the thing. No, this episode I was remembering, which must have been the spring of 1953, when Oppie [J. Robert Oppenheimer] was on the Board of Overseers. At that time, we’d had […]
Oral History
Ed Hammel’s Interview
July 11, 2016
Martin Sherwin: The work must have been sort of very frustrating for a while, before that [Stanislaus] Ulam-[Edward] Teller breakthrough [on the hydrogen bomb]. Ed Hammel: Well, sure. There was—  Sherwin: What were you doing at that time? Hammel: At that point, I continued with having this group in charge of properties of plutonium. But one […]
Oral History
Ted Taylor’s Interview – Part 4
June 1, 2016
Rhodes: Well, I had started to ask you about the Korean War. Was that a shock? Did that worry everyone and accelerate your sense of pressure? Taylor: I don’t think so. I don’t remember any feeling of pressure, that we had to do something by a certain time or else all hell would break lose. […]
Oral History
Siegfried Hecker’s Interview – Part 3
May 5, 2016
Siegfried Hecker: Okay, I was just—a little bit more on the testing business. Again, I will not give you much because eventually, I am sure you will do all the research on this. There are some interesting dynamics in the testing business all the way around, because it is such an emotional issue. So hard […]
Oral History
Ted Taylor’s Interview – Part 3
May 3, 2016
Richard Rhodes: Although again, I was struck in Russia with how different a world that was. Ted Taylor: Oh, yeah. Rhodes: How much more closely they were— Taylor: That is why I am so thankful because in many other places people get shot. Rhodes: Yeah. We could not even get directions on the street. Nobody […]
Oral History
Hanford 25th Anniversary Celebration
April 8, 2016
[Many thanks to Claude Lyneis for donating this footage to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.] Narrator: About seventy-five miles northwest of Walla Walla, Washington, in an isolated expanse of open desert, civilization entered into a new age, an age from which it would never emerge the same. Here, in the home of the Wanapum Indians, the […]
Oral History
Ernest Tremmel’s Interview
March 16, 2016
Ernest Tremmel: I’m Ernie Tremmel.  I graduated from the University of Wisconsin in civil engineering, and I went to work for the Corps of Engineers in St. Louis. One of my bosses was a Captain Powell who, after I was in St. Louis two years, got transferred to a secret project he was going to […]