“Oh Mighty Hand of Progress and Science. We beseech thee to guide or ways. Help us to secure funding for our Research Projects. Show us the mysteries of Nature that we may harness them and produce a brighter cleaner wash! Shelter us from the elements and bring us good and ever-lasting AC. Beloved Mighty Hand grasp the mighty atom and hold it forth for us...

In America, the 1950s and 60s spawned The Monster Kids. These were kids, mostly pre-adolescent boys, who assembled Aurora model kits of Frankenstein or Dracula after school; read Tales From The Crypt comics with a flashlight under the covers at bed time; and sneaked downstairs on Saturdays to watch the late-night horror movie show on TV with spooky hosts like Zacherle, Chilly Billy, or Ghoulardi....

The religion of The Atom died with Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. With that fall from grace came the end of many of our utopian dreams. A responsible future of conservation and organic carrots just wasn’t very exciting. Although widespread use of the atom remains controversial; 436 reactors remain the source of 15 per cent of the world’s electricity. In some European countries atomic power...

Atomic power was projected to be very cheap. We were going to have electricity coming out of our ears! We would not have to import oil from crazy foreigners or dig up whole states looking for coal. Utility companies and government agencies around the world took up the chant of the mighty atom. Nuclear power plants were seen as a springboard for third world countries...

The clips, produced in 1955 and 1959 about the atomic bomb, radioactive fallout and how you can protect your self from it. For someone born in later decades it is probably hard to grasp the hype, fear and fascination about the atomic bomb in the height of the cold war era. Especially for those living on the eastern seaboard of the US, which were apparently...