PROJECT XX: THREE, TWO, ONE, ZERO (TV)
Summary
One in this series of irregularly scheduled documentaries. This program focuses on the atomic age, the building of the atomic bomb, and the harnessing of atomic energy for peaceful uses. Highlights include the following: July 15, 1945, at Alamogordo, New Mexico, the first atomic bomb is tested as Vannevar Bush, James B. Conant, and J. Robert Oppenheimer look on; at the Potsdam Conference with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, President Harry Truman receives word of the successful explosion; on Guam, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz prepares for a seaborne invasion of Japan to end the war; the Enola Gay drops the atom bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945; on August 9, 1945, the U.S. Air Force drops the atom bomb on Nagasaki; the resulting devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the development of atomic theory, including the contributions of Albert Einstein, Lise Meitner, Niels Bohr, Otto Hahn, and Fritz Strassman; from Princeton, Einstein sends a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning him of the possibility of building a powerful weapon based on splitting the atom and setting off a nuclear chain reaction; December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi verifies the fact that splitting an atom can set off a chain reaction in tests at the University of Chicago; Major Gen. Leslie R. Groves and the Manhattan Engineer District; the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC); abstract animation is used to explain atomic theory; the alliance of China and the Soviet Union and the beginning of the Cold War; Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech; at the U.N., Bernard Baruch proposes an international authority to control atomic activities; Bush and the Atomic Review Committee decide that the Soviet Union has the atomic bomb; January 1950, President Truman orders the AEC to continue work on the hydrogen bomb; the H-bomb is exploded at Eniwetok on October 31, 1952; victims of Hiroshima; the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies; and President Dwight Eisenhower on the atomic dilemma. Commercials deleted.
Cataloging of this program was made possible by The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, 1999.
Details
- NETWORK: NBC
- DATE: September 13, 1954 8:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:53:27
- COLOR/B&W: B&W
- CATALOG ID: T81:0405
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Atomic bomb; Atomic theory; Eniwetok; Enola Gay (bomber); Hiroshima, Japan; Hydrogen bomb; Nagasaki, Japan; U S Atomic Energy Commission; World War II - 1945; U S - Foreign relations - U S S R
- SERIES RUN: NBC - TV series, 1954-1971
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Henry Salomon … Producer, Writer
- Richard Hanser … Writer
- Robert Russell Bennett … Music by
- Alexander Scourby … Narrator
- Bernard Baruch
- Niels Bohr
- Vannevar Bush
- Winston S. Churchill
- James B. Conant
- Albert Einstein
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Enrico Fermi
- Leslie R. Groves
- Otto Hahn
- Morris Mamorsky
- Lise Meitner
- Chester W. Nimitz
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Joseph Stalin
- Fritz Strassman
- Harry S. Truman
- Harry S. Truman