That Time Kodak Accidentally Discovered the World's First Atomic Bomb
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- Опубліковано 13 лип 2021
- Say, "Irradiated Cheese!"
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Sources:
English, Trevor, When Kodak Accidentally Discovered an A-Bomb Test, Interesting Engineering, October 7, 2020, interestingengineering.com/wh...
Blitz, Matt, When Kodak Accidentally Discovered A-Bomb Testing, Popular Mechanics, June 20, 2016, www.popularmechanics.com/scie...
Webb, Julian, The Fogging of Photographic Film by Radioactive Contaminants in Cardboard Packaging Materials, Physical Review, August 1, 1949, journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/...
Cooke, Alex, How Kodak Discovered the Atomic Bomb, Fstoppers, February 10, 2016, fstoppers.com/historical/how-...
Barribeau, Tim, Not-So-Secret Atomic Tests: Why the Photographic Film Industry Knew What the American Public Didn’t, Imaging Resources, February 26, 2013, www.imaging-resource.com/news...
Get the Facts About Exposure to I-131 Radiation, National Cancer Institute, www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/c...
Damn, Kodak got Sherlock Holmes working for them
I was the same way like “wait he really went that far huh?”
I can just imagine the difficulty in investigating it because the only way to get that information was to go there and read the documents or call and have someone else read those documents too.
Oh man the “there’s something wrong with this picture” line at the senate hearing is like the ultimate burn
A loaded statement for sure.
Unfortunately, when the government does 'care about kids' it's used to push through draconian nanny state measures.. We will always be Guinea Pigs to TPTB.
Radiation burn?
Completely out of focus i would say.
“there’s something wrong with this picture” buda-boom-boom-p-ts
That was a Kodak Moment💥 👀
Another was tracing chemical contamination of film products to a shared rubbish can. One of the users in this housing complex was a hairdresser, who handled Mercury-based compounds that were transferred to the Kodak employee's hands.
"There is something wrong with this Picture" awesome quote.
Now that's how you make a Pun!
my mom clinically died 3 times when she was a child from a damaged thyroid in the very early 1960s. the government tried to downplay the severity and hide the reasons why so many people had thyroid damage at that time. this was actually really good content and i hope you report on more stories like this. Thanks to Kodak for fighting the nuclear military industrial complex.
Reminds me of how Chernobyl was discovered in the West by Nuclear Power plants in Europe that monitor radiation for safety.
At least Chernobyl was an accident. The Americans were fully aware of the harm they were causing
@@roberth.5938 Chernobyl wasn't really an accident, it wasn't intentional but it was definitely no accident. Incompetence and a moronic, egotistical government are to blame
The funny part is that NONE of the nuclear plants in Europe reported the radiation as they thought it was coming from them.
@@superjive8282 the problem was in the design of the reactor Rbmk1000, the type of failure could only happen in that particular reactor, with the level of Soviet leadership, and minimal training of technicians.
It’s hard to hide radiation.
So fallout gives you cancer AND makes it harder to diagnose.
I think the reason the AEC worked with the film companies is that special film for reconnaissance photos would also be affected.
nah, it was more likely because the legal case would’ve been huge news, and they had no idea how much Kodak actually knew, and could reveal to the public in court
Also evidence of the testing would have been releasable in discovery.
The threat of being sued and exposed (no pun intended) seems like the biggest factor here.
As an American I'm not even remotely shocked by this
That doesn't surprise me.
As an non-American I'm not even remotely shocked by this
What does it have to do with America? All governments lie to their people.
@@sketchesofpayne well I guess that makes it alright then?
@@system3008
doesn’t “make it alright” but that’s not the point.
The point is:
the constant America bashing is annoying. Especially when Americans are bashing America. It has become very shopworn to say this, but if people don’t like it here, they should leave.
People who hate America really ought to expatriate themselves.
It’s too bad that kicking those people out would be unconstitutional. It’s also ironic, since those people hate the very Constitution that protects them.
I remember in the late 1950s not being allowed to drink fresh milk because of radioactive fallout. For several months we had to drink powdered milk(not yum) and only use margarine(in those days also not yum).
Was your dad the powdered milk man?
My folks used to make ice cream from fresh snow. They had to quit doing that in the 1950s because of the risk of radiation.
I heard that a sci-fi magazine also figured out where the Manhattan project was because prominent scientists had changed their address to receive it.
OH ! That is so cool. I can see it. 71521
Yup! First, they published a speculative fiction story about how it would go if the government were working on a nuclear weapon. It was so well researched that the government hauled them in for questioning and said "who the $&@% told you" and they said "nobody, we're just really good writers." Then at the end of the meeting they said "Oh btw, we know it's actually happening out in Nevada. Half the nations prominent physicists just changed their address to the middle of the desert."
@@missybarbour6885 I wish I would have been there to see this gigantic BURN, lol.
@@missybarbour6885 This story reminds me of the fact that a crossword just before the D day landings contained 5 of the code words from the invasion plan and scared the people organising the invasion as they believed that the crossword was a spy saying that the information had got out. They called the paper editor and crossword writer in and they had to convince them tgey weren't German spies...
I knew about this from a different video, but this goes into details I wasn't aware of... Well done Simon and team.
I live in Rochester, my buddies dad worked in a nuclear reactor they have and here is a funny story about that, the government had NO IDEA Kodak owned a functioning experimental nuclear reactor and when they found out, they raided it (this is fairly recent).. If you ask me, the government forgot about it! lol
They have lost or forgotten about a great many things.
@@zed1stwizard Like the Ark of the Covenant
Trying to work out what raiding it as apposed to just sending around a team of inspectors would achieve.
Also Rochester really gets a rough deal
I'd imagine seeing the ATF banning *fully semiautomatic automatic nuclear reactors*
@@theenzoferrari458 Please don't give them ideas...
Gotta love that totally safe thousands of miles long cloud of radioactive snow.
We never played in the first snow of the year.
Your beard gets more viking by each day.
News Flash! "Ragnar Lothbrok" is alive and making information videos on UA-cam!";)
Floki
“There’s something wrong with this picture.”
🎶🥁 Ba-dum-dum-tisssss!
I remember when the atomic energy commission ruled Las Vegas. In a town of 60k 25k of those residents worked out at the NTS - Nevada Test Site. We used to go out to the viewing areas for the open air testing. And of the hundreds of pictures my father took. Hardly any of them ever turned out without the white noise from the radiation. But yeah we were foolish enough to expose ourselves. Fortunately we don't glow in the dark nor has cancer afflicted the family.
This episode has secured it's place near the top of my favorite episodes list!
This story is awesome! I thought I had a decent plethora of knowledge on trinity, and then slapped in the face with humbleness when I see this! Thank you!
I've been to one of the Kodak plants in Colorado, delivered pizza to them a few times. strangely high level of security for a place that still makes film.
Not just film Kodak also makes many chemical compounds and dyes. So yeah it's actually a pretty scary company if you dig into it.
dang
@@DanteAtropos They used to have a nuclear facility which got raided recently too btw
If that factory makes photographic film emulsions, photographic film contains silver as part of the light sensitive compounds.
It's not the film. It's that three letter agencies that still use 70 year old gear USE that film, so it is a national security sensitive facility.
Julian Webb deserves to be remembered for this amazing bit of detective work.
Chemical photography truly is a weird weird thing the more you look into it.
This was a great video Simon. Loved it! Nice finish from the senator from Iowa!
Kodak also had a corner on silver. Silver was backing the U.S. Dollar and was still a strategic reserve. The Eastman family (through their control of silver reserves) was also propping up the British Pound to an even MORE extent. The Manhattan Project and the reactor facilities on the Hanford Range were dependant on post-war research being done at Oxford and Cambridge
(7:05) Oh my God. I had a supervisor back in the late-1980's who had those formations on his throat. I never asked him about it, because I'm not one to pry.
Thyroid cancer can be attributed to Radioactive iodine in some cases. Notice salt comes iodized? This allows the thyroid to be full and not absorb 131. "Radiation pills" are nothing more than iodine but does not protect against the 1/2 dozen other contaminants found in fallout.
It’s called goiter
@@jerrynewberry2823 iodine deficiency is the reason salt is iodized.
@@Heksu99 if you say so.
Mutually Assured Destruction is tight!
*M.A.D., Mutually Assured Destruction is MAD 😉
I just wish they’d get it over already! Blow this shit to kingdom come!
Very tight
Wrong channel
Wow, Wow wowow,.. wow
3:31 - So closely guarded that Stalin had blueprints of the weapon.
You can thank our greatest ally for that one.
Stalin had the blueprints because the traitor gave it to him.
@@neilkurzman4907 Brit "security" passed Fuchs and "Sonya", in spite of red flags all over the place.
@@currentbatches6205
Do you think that’s bad, look up Pakistan stole the information for the bomb.
While international spies were watching.
Another really cool video. Thanks!
This is a great video man. I've never heard of this at all and I love nuclear history.
Holy crap. Kodak jumped on the problem immediately. No excuses or cop outs. Just jumped right in there and tried to find out the problem. I don’t know why good business practices like that are so rare. I guess you can’t maintain a business if anything is beyond the level of mediocre nowadays and full of excuses as to why it’s crap the product and keep throwing money at us.
Love the channel!! Any chance you will do the Goiania Incident?
That was fascinating, and depressing. Makes me feel a bit less silly for owning a Geiger counter
(there is an analog dial geiger counter in my company's office, among some old lab equipment and a 1920s lab report on concrete test cylinders strength...
How many geigers do you count with it?
@@jerrynewberry2823 thankfully only small fractions of a Geiger. If it ever counts a whole Geiger at once, I'm running
@@alexmcd378 geigers aren't measurements. And you use a Radiac to check for radioactive emissions. Rad-Con US Navy 67-69 USS Simon Lake
@@jerrynewberry2823 yes, mine measures milliSieverts. It was a silly response to a silly comment. You get one pedant point.
it's on a need to know basis... and kodak needs to know.
Eastman Chemical (at the time owned by Eastman Kodak) management became the operations lead on the Y-12 plant of Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which helped develop the atomic bomb. He may have had a little inside info.
"Always trust the government. It has your best interests in mind."
Yup.
Best joke I’ve heard in a while….
No, it’s “trust the science,” after all our current batch of government funded scientists are just as accurate as those in the 40’s & 50’s who said there was no threat.
@@contradictorycrow4327 interesting, although a few more specifics would be useful. I mean was it because of chemicals he developed, or his work resulted in the wide use and/or acceptance?
@@contradictorycrow4327 can you elaborate?
@@johnpatz8395
No I believe we should not trust anyone named John. Because people in the past named John caused all kinds of problems. So I never trust a John. Does it sound stupid when I aim your conspiracy theory right back at you?
The oldest free-standing bar in Las Vegas is a place on Fremont Street (east of the Fremont Street Experience) called Atomic Liquors. It's called that because patrons used to set up lawn chairs on the roof to watch the disturbingly nearby nuclear detonations.
These days it's a very nice craft cocktail bar and I highly recommend it.
I hear their drinks are... lit
I was born and raised in Rochester and never heard of this story, but I'm not surprised Kodak would keep the government 's secrets. There was always rumors in Rochester of Kodak working closely on secret projects with the U.S. government. Kodak Park was the company's biggest installation in Rochester and it was made of multiple buildings that covered miles of area. All of those buildings were numbered, but the rumor was that some Kodak people worked in an unumbered building on secret government projects.
Damn, that was some good detective work by Kodak.
Wow. Mr. Webb was an impressive quality control officer. The concept of someone having that skill level in the 40's to track down the Trinity test site and it's contamination is mind blowing.
Great video good sir. Have you ever done any videos on the history behind the sin eaters?
I live just a few minutes from rochester and Kodak and never knew about this
Good video 👍
Ah, the old proud American tradition of prioritising big corporations' profits over their citizens' health and safety. What a surprise, to absolutely nobody.
This was not prioritizing companies, it was preventing them from going public, for the sake of secrecy and national security, to keep the USSR guessing. The government could care less about a few slightly fuzzy photos, and people would’ve barely noticed if it wasn’t for Kodak’s quality control.
@@johnj8639 Well that in itself is BS. There were Soviet spies working FOR the atomic bomb programme. No, this was down to the government habitually lying.
@@the_once-and-future_king. How is a nuclear bomb not a matter of national security? if anything ever was to be a national security issue it surely would be that? Also, no, there were never any soviet spies that infiltrated the American nuclear program, and certainly not any that ever contributed to the soviet nuclear program, regardless by that logic I don't understand why you would suddenly declassify a program, we don't need the whole world knowing how to build nukes now do we?
Yep its the same as its always been in the world minus a few outliers who are the exceptions that prove the rule. No reason to bash america cant cry foul when youre fowl.
National Security is a term thrown out by the government any time it wants an excuse to do something patently wrong. There was 0 need to test those bombs where they did other than convenience, the nations security wasn't threatened by a small transport delay. Whether it was intentional or not, this was blatant disregard for the health of our people in favor of having a slightly more convenient place to test weapons platforms.
That's an amazing story, and one that I had never heard prior to this.
Good God! Could you imagine if every company and person had this much quality control!?? I mean seriously, talk about dedication and determination! 😆
Moral of the story: Never trust the Government or the Cooperations which aid the Government. Very poignant in 2021 when one considers the current situation.
Right but you should trust idiots that comment on fake news channels.
Just because you can’t trust the government that doesn’t mean you can trust those that talk against them. Both could be idiots
@@neilkurzman4907 I don't trust the people who reply to my comments.
@@CochinKerala
That’s OK I don’t trust you to make comments.
@@neilkurzman4907 then why waste your time in replying to me?
@@CochinKerala
For the same reason you chose to reply to me.
Could you do something about the Palomares incident? I find it fascinating
"It gives me niiiiice bright colors, give us the greeeens of summers, makes you think all the worlds a sunny day, oh yeah!"
Paul Simon, Kodachrome
Please do one on the Maralinga Aust. Nuke testing...
I've lived near Rochester, NY most of my life and Kodak is synonymous with daily life history around here. It's awesome (and slightly terrifying) that I have never heard this story before!
And that particular government is still In charge. Be it in descendants or close friends and family, all with the same goals and mindset.
yes under capitalism the same people are always in charge
@@thenormalyears In communism, some people exploit the others.
In capitalism is the exact opposite!
No, that _particular_ government isn't in charge. Elected officials get voted in and out of office. Policies change. Saying the government in the 1940's and the government in 2021 is the same is sheer ignorance.
@@sketchesofpayne the elected government is nothing more than puppets on a string for the shadow government to control
No the people from that particular government have all died of old age. And some of cancer I assume. Or is your plan to overthrow the government so you can create a new corrupt government?
That's one fascinating story.
Tom Harkin, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I remember when he ran for president.
I teach a high school photography class and would love to show this to my students!
Dude, beard is looking sharp 💪🏽
Yeah wish I could grow an epic beard like that. It's even funnier because Simon is a tiny 5'5" 125lb dude
Man, that was a gigantic security issue, to share nuclear test information in advance to an entire industry in the private sector.
Webb and his team put together this investigation in the Physical Review in 1949- this work continued well past 2000. Kodak continued its radioactive monitoring program through its suppliers in semi-secret through early 2000. Film was a discreet way to monitor global trace radioactive monitoring without raising suspicion. Large volume water filters, air filters and product samples were taken globally (even in countries not directly friendly with the US government) and sent to Kodak labs for evaluation. Most of the technicians weren't aware of what they were testing or why.
The data was not used solely for protecting film. Data was collaboratively shared with University of Rochester for their respective radiation risk evaluation which was documented in the Plutonium Files book. There was a lot if incestual relationships between Kodak, the University of Rochester, Medicine and the Manhattan Project and what became the DOE. Stafford Warren as a major example contributed to the mammogram, radio toxicology / epidemiology and the Manhattan program and Kodak's imaging in his career. Kodak also managed the Oak Ridge facility for a time during WW2.
As the early analysis by Webb was not only quantitative it was qualitative as to species (even before spectroscopic tools existed) it allowed a window into other countries fallout products, weapons capabilities, and pathways of the products. Cesium-137 ended up in gelatin of bones so by testing bones from a certain region Kodak could avoid bad gel and the other institutional players handed the information got a glimpse as to how radioactivity moved in the body and reverse engineering the nuclear blast through fallout.
Kodak also allegedly played a part sending the Russians on a red herring expedition on trying to sell the Russians Thorium to use on fission experiments during WW2. Kodak operating the Oak Ridge plant understood Thorium was not practical for this purpose but was happy to sell the Russians rail cars full of Thorium nitrate on a red herring expedition fueled by US government.
Blowing stuff. That's also a Kodak moment!
Video on the Vela incident please 😁
imagine being that kodak investigator... some real x-files stuff
being the first out-of-the-loop person to know about atomic bombs existing, and exploding
I seem to remember a Manhattan project documentary mentioning Kodak developed special technical film for getting the explosion documented and studied. Normal film has the range if about 11 stops of light at the most, anything darker gets swallowed in the shades and anything too bright is just maxing out the sensitivity. So you could either run 3 cameras with different ISO rated films, and try to synchronize the frames, or what Kodak made them was a colour emulsion where each of the color chemical binders had a vastly different ISO rating and you technically get a dynamic range of about 25-30 stops in one frame. The colors don't designate real world colors, but a different range of light exposure.
Whoa the beard is looking wild today!
Also it’s super cool that Julian Webb could trace things back to the Trinity test. There must have been a bit of an aha moment when the bomb was dropped.
I have heard that car windshields also had problems due to the testing.
Senator Tom Harkin used the "Straw-Man" fallacy, presented at the end the video. When you realize that there is a mismatch between someone's stance and the stance that their opponent is attacking, it's a clear sign that a strawman is being used.
I'm sitting in my apartment in Vincennes, and I hear a person actually mention this town on youtube.
What are the odds of that happening ? Really! That's crazy. 71521
Wow! I really mean wow. I've been watching these channels and few stories surprise me anymore, but this was really interesting. What a strange series of events. The secrecy, however, does not surprise me one bit.
I once went to a great lilac festival in Rochester, NY. I also saw the Kodak Tower, which was nice.
I'm from the UK and I still smile at the American pronunciation of the word lilac. I was on a coach trip returning from Niagara falls. If you have read this far, well done ✅
Please do one on the follow-on, Manhattan-Rochester Project.
When the government tells you there is nothing to worry about be worried, very worried.
Be sure to get your vaxx
Because the government woul never do anything that would endanger an mass of citizens
I like how the thumbnails on this show are starting to use Business Blaze photos even though Simon wears something completely different in the videos. xD
"There is something wrong with this Picture" Bada-bum-bum-tish
Fun part is some of the Manhattan project research was conducted right in rochester at the University of Rochester.. which is some 3.7 miles away from Kodak's then global headquarters building in downtown Rochester. Its a small, small world 😁
This episode reminds me of Connections by Burke.
Is there already a video about the Nevada Test Site (e.g. on the Geographics channel)? :)
Hey I'm from Vincennes lol don't live there now but its kinda funny seeing it in one of these videos....I've been to that spot with the railroad bridge
That headline was perfect.
Hello from Vincennes, Indiana.
The US Government wanted to make sure that the Kodak X-Rays of the tumors caused by the Atomic testing were good.
How thoughtful of them.
“There’s something wrong with this picture.” hahahahha savage!
We talked about this yesterday while walk pass the Kodak building
All the nuclear content of late has been fascinating
I really give it strong glowing reviews.
I’d agree
Yep the softwares been updated to prepare us for the big update.
I've been watching business blaze and swapping back to this channel has me shook lol
FAB episode
Very cool story.
You should do a video on the Runit Dome on the Enewetak Atoll(By the Marshall islands), sad what the native people and even soldiers went through because of that concrete ☢️ dome.
That time that Kodak had a nuclear device in their basement... Kodak Park's Underground Nuclear Reactor
I remember when Kodak was a thing..
No ones that old
Me too. Now Rochester is a dead city thanks to the stupidity of not going digital fast enough.
I remember Rex, he was my pet tyrannosaur.
I think it was Popular Mechanics magazine that had an article about building your own homemade Geiger counter in the 1950s...
Take Care, John
"Click, Click, BOOM"
I lived in Las Vegas during two underground nuclear tests. They were done early in the morning while I was still in bed but awake. If you lay still you could feel the rumble in the earth and just on the edge of hearing the sound they created.
That moment when you look out the window and can see said mentioned river. lol
Videos already been done, but better
Minor but important correction. In the US, radioactive fallout does not drift for thousands of kilometers. It drifts for thousands of miles.
"the goverment whould never do harm to its own people"
- IDK probably someone who does`nt know what goverments do.
The Tuskegee Experiment
LMAO
Not sure I’ve ever heard anyone utter such a phrase, if it’s joke it’s not very funny and a bit morbid
@@johnj8639 i have heard it before unironically
gonna just post this now before i watch and say, if memory serves me correctly, wasn't the Paul Simon song "Kodachrome" about this years ago?? from like wayyy back in my childhood
"mama don't take my kodachrome"
i'm sticking with my story!
Have you done a piece on the ELF, that is, the Extra Low Frequency here in upper Michigan? No longer front line tech, it was a connection to all of our submarines, all over the world.
@9:07 "There is something wrong with this picture"
A picture do tells a thousand words
Kodak also forgot they had a nuclear reactor in the basement in Rochester.
It wasn't a reactor, it was a research device that used two static neutron sources, one of which was enriched uranium, which is a nuclear fuel, but it was too small an amount and also diluted by alloying with other metals, and none of the processes that happen in a nuclear reactor ever happened there.
This video reminded me of how my father explained atomic explosions to very young me.
"When you're older I'll get into the actual science but for now just think of them as lighting God's farts."
I prefer this explanation to the actual science.
does that make uranium nuclear shit?
lighting gods farts. thats the best description ever
@@draconightwalker4964 God may not play with dice but He, like all of us, has gambled with farts. Sometimes even He loses and releases radioactive sharts.
Which makes the sun a giant wet God fart. Think of this to give yourself a reason to avoid the sun!
YAY! TAMA IOWA! I live about 20 miles from there.
The number of people in this area (monroe county NY) that've died from cancer is off the charts.