First Atomic Bomb Tested

Historical Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Domains

Nuclear weapons

Dates

Date of occurrence 1945-07-16

Places

United States (Location)

The first atomic bomb was tested on July 16, 1945 in the New Mexico desert. The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. The second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. For more information on the physics see our entry on the Hydrogen Bomb.

The first steps towards the development of the bomb were taken by physicists in the summer of 1939 when Albert Einstein was encouraged to make President Roosevelt aware of the potential of nuclear fission devices. Early work on the device began in February 1940 and increased exponentially when the US entered the war in December 1941. From June 1942 the development work was collected under the name “the Manhattan project” (after Columbia University, …

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161 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "First Atomic Bomb Tested". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 March 2005 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1530, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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First Atomic Bomb Tested

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