Wonder what happened?

[rogdeb]

On the day I was born (Aug 8th 1945) my Dad made a small scrapbook of newspaper articles from that day. The following are just some of the predictions for the “Atomic Age”

Piece from the UK Daily Mirror, 08/08/1945

Lands - Using the enormous heat given out by exploding atoms, countries covered by ice may be able to melt that ice to make more areas inhabitable.

Homes - Electricity will still heat and light our homes. But steam to run electric dynamos will come from atomically heated water. Current will then only cost a fraction of what it is today.

Labour - There would be less work for hundreds and thousands of miners and transport workers, but this does not mean unemployment. Each worker would have his hours of work shortened.

Coal & Petrol - As obsolete as charcoal.

Petrol Engines - Will be superseded by small high powered atomic engines.

Aeroplanes - Designers will plan for huge plywood or plastic planes, capable of carrying thousands of passengers. Weight of engines and fuel will be negligible.

Motor Cars - The future car designer will now not have to take into account the weight of the engine.

Just in case this may be of any interest. :lol:

No mention of Motor Bicycles though!

 

[fjrchooser]

Reality happened.

Lightweight, indestructable shielding was never invented.

Not to mention nowadays some jerkwad would re-configure his Volkswagon to take out New York because someone who once lived there slighted him 20 years ago. :huh:

 

[OrangevaleFJR]

Well, all that is pretty hilarious. 21 years after that, my father moved from England to the US. He had just finished as the Lead Designer of the nuclear power plant just outside of Manchester and was offered another Lead Designer position for the plant outside of Edinburgh. England turned down his grant request to research cold fusion, so he came to the US to work on the Apollo missions.

Wow...let's melt ice with nuclear radiation...good idea. Do we all know how lucky Chicago is to be standing?

https://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/Scienc...irstNuclear.htm

Talk about seat of the pants science!

 

[rogdeb]

https://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/Scienc...irstNuclear.htmTalk about seat of the pants science!

Interesting reading !

 

[v65]

Reminds me of a story told by a mathematician that worked on the first atom bomb (can't rememember his name) that I read in a mathematics journal. He was asked by one of the physicists on the project to double check his calculations. He asked what the calculations were for, the physicist told him he didn't need to know that, just check the calculations. The mathematician insisted, so finally the physicist relented. The physicist told him (paraphrasing)

"There is a possibility that when we set the bomb off that a chain reaction might occur that will ignite the entire atmosphere. According to these calculations that won't happen, we want you to double check them."

Apparently he went over the calculations in some great detail. Much later in talking to a Russian scientist he discovered that they had been worried about the same thing!