Birth of the mega-bomb
QUESTION How powerful was the first atomic bomb?
THE first atomic test, codenamed Trinity, was the culmination of the Manhattan Project, begun in June 1942, which was established to build an atomic bomb.
At the time it was believed to be a race to beat the Germans who, according to (incorrect) intelligence reports, were building their own atomic bomb.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory was established under the Codename Project Y in New Mexico as where the bomb would be designed and built. At Los Alamos, J Robert Oppenheimer led a team of many of the greatest scientific minds of the day.
Oppenheimer named the project Trinity, inspired by the poet John Donne’s reference to the Christian notion of the Trinity (threefold nature of God), perhaps specifically the line: ‘Batter my heart, three person’d God.’
The site chosen for the test was a remote corner on the Alamagordo Bombing Range known as the Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death) Desert, 340 kilometres south of Los Alamos.
Three observation bunkers 10,000 yards north, west and south of the firing tower at ground zero were built to measure the symmetry of the implosion and the amount of energy released. The instrumentation surrounding the site was tested with a blast of a large amount of conventional explosives on May 7, 1945.
At 5.29am on Monday, July 16, 1945, the nuclear age began.
At the time of the blast, Enrico Fermi famously attempted to calculate the energy released by the explosion. Before the test he worked out how far the blast wave might displace small pieces of paper released into it. Shortly after the explosion, Fermi sprinkled his paper into the atomic wind and estimated from their deflection that the test had released energy equivalent to 10,000 tons of TNT.
He was a long way out. The actual result calculated that a 21,000-ton (21 kilotons) TNT equivalent had been released.
The test bomb was a plutoniumpowered device directly equivalent to Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Little Boy, dropped on Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945, was a uranium 235 bomb. The Hiroshima bomb yield was estimated to be lower at 12,000-15,000 tons of TNT.
The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba, set off by the USSR in 1961, produced a 50-megaton TNT equivalent blast, about 3,333 times more powerful than the Little Boy bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
Dr Ken Bristow, Glasgow.
QUESTION Did David and Victoria Beckham try to prevent Peterborough United from using the nickname ‘Posh’?
THE Beckhams go to great lengths to control their public images, but Victoria Beckham made a mistake in 2002 when she tried to halt the registration of ‘Posh’ by English soccer club Peterborough United. The club had been known as The Posh since the Thirties and in 1998 had sought to register a trademark of its nickname for merchandising. Victoria Beckham, known at the time as Posh Spice, claimed her moniker had more brand recognition than the soccer club’s claim to its badge of origin.
A statement from Beckham’s publicity team stated: ‘While Victoria accepts the football club are nicknamed Posh, and might want to use the name in association with football products, there is no conceivable reason why they should need blanket coverage for every class of goods.
‘The name Posh is associated with Mrs Beckham, and the concern from her team is that they (the public) would think she had in some way endorsed products she had no knowledge of.’ Geoff Davey, the club’s CEO at the time, said he was ‘absolutely stunned’ to receive the writ. ‘One reason was that our claim to the use of the name Posh should be challenged. The second reason was that someone as big as Victoria Beckham would want to raise this challenge. The name is part of the club’s history and tradition.’
Faced by a blizzard of bad publicity, the Beckham camp quietly backed down in January 2003.
D L Willis, London.
QUESTION Cinema names from a certain period seem to come from a pool that includes The Odeon, The Stella, The Savoy, The Adelphi, etc. Where did these kind of names come from?
FURTHER to previous answers, I grew up in Waterford during the 1950s and there was a local ‘chain’ of cinemas in the South East area, with all of their names beginning with ‘R’ – which were owned by the Breen family. In Waterford city were the Regal and Regina. In nearby New Ross was the Ritz. Tramore town had the Rex.
All these except the Regina were opened in the 1930s/40s. The Regina was ‘a plush cinema’, opened in 1957 (I attended the first film shown at the Regina; ‘High Society’, starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra), in contrast to the others, which were less so.
There were four cinemas in Waterford City back then, including the Savoy and the Coliseum (‘the Col’). The Col was unusual, as it had a ‘manageress’ in charge.
I remember a rock and roll song tune back in the 1950s, with improvised words, about the Col and its manageress: ‘Have you ever been, down to the Coliseum, with Miss Carroll on the door? Why, from miles away, you can hear her say, “Stop that trampling on the floor”.’
The Col’s patrons had been well known for demonstrating their disapproval of a poor film-show, in such a noisy fashion.
Tom Baldwin, Midleton, Co. Cork.
QUESTION The lady who invented the fidget spinner allowed her patent to expire and missed out on a fortune. Has a similar situation happened before?
PREVIOUS answers brought back happy memories of working for Invicta Plastics in Leicester, England. Invicta was a plastic injection moulding manufacturer which produced a wide range of products for a number of markets including education and drinks. They also produced the famous Beatle badges of the Sixties.
But Invicta famously produced the game Mastermind when it was contacted by Israeli communications expert Mordecai Meirowitz, who invented it. Invicta bought it for less than two thousand pounds. Mastermind made the company millions.
On the day the photography for the outer box was scheduled, just before the launch, the model who was to portray the ‘spy’ did not turn up. But Ted Jones-Fenleigh, who started the company, said: ‘My barber looks like a spy... go and get him.’ The barber, Bill Woodward, turned up and, with a girl off the shop floor, the famous photograph on the Mastermind box was taken. Bill travelled the world promoting the game. Mastermind was sold off a few years ago and, sadly, Invicta Plastics no longer exists.
Brian Moore, West Midlands.