As the twentieth century neared its end and pundits began to compile their lists of significant moments in history, it was hardly surprising to find that the development of the atomic bomb ranked high amidst the top ten turning points. With the destruction of Hiroshima, it seemed, the world had changed in an instant. The power of the bomb had obliterated a city, killed many thousands, and brought the end of the war suddenly near. But the bomb also wrought changes in politics and culture, as an unwary humanity was suddenly confronted with the possibility of its own apocalyptic demise. The Atomic Age had begun.
Delivering the 1956 Dyason Lecture, historian Arnold Toynbee reflected on the meanings of both democracy and the Atomic Age. They were, he argued, ‘portmanteau words’, whose contents had to be carefully unpacked. The Atomic Age comprised intellectual and technological elements, Toynbee noted, but the factor that loomed largest was apprehension inspired by the prospect of atomic war. The Atomic Age was a label, a period of time, an index of technological development, and a feeling. It is a phrase that conjures still a range of familiar images, from missile silos to ‘duck and cover’, from bad sci-fi to the prospect of a technological utopia. Where do we begin in a study of the Atomic Age—with the scientists? the technology? And what do we mean when we talk about the Atomic Age in Australia, a country whose involvement with the atomic energy has been largely as an exporter of uranium and testing site for British bombs? For something that seems so familiar, so obvious, so central to an understanding of the twentieth century, the meaning of the Atomic Age remains elusive.
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