Clicks and Bangs: The Lost Art Of Detecting Atomic Tests

North Korea'S Atomic Test on Monday 9th October 2006 created two sets of shockwaves.

The photo on the front cover of The Times (one of Britain's national daily newspapers) the following day shows a seismograph recording with the silhouette of a hand pointing at a dense attentiveness of spikes and waves.

News North Korea

The headline above: 'The moment that shook the world.' The pun had been biding its time and newspaper subs must have been delighted for an occasion to use it.

The North Korean atomic test has deeply aggravated the anxiety of the Us and other states concerned about the foreign procedure ambitions of North Korea.
But Us anxiety over some threat has never been far away.

It faded shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, only to reappear with the catastrophic new era of flamboyant global terrorism that began on the Us mainland shortly afterwards.
'I'll make it myself': home electronics, Cold War style

In the 1950s to sixties, electronic components became widely ready to consumers in the Usa and Great Britain. At the time, a primary estimate of population were nearby with the theoretical and technical understanding to use these components in circuits with a practical application.

Some had been radar engineers during the Second World War. Others had trained more recently to apply their skills in industry. The very skilled had the capability to build a television set for home use out of components from disused radar circuitry.

Old-school electronics

An A5-sized monthly called beloved Electronics carried designs for an array of circuits for the home constructor. Some used the latest semiconductor components. Others used vacuum-tube circuitry.

Amateur radio was successful and many circuits were for listening or transmitting equipment. Hi-Fi was another beloved theme.

The magazine's pages also carried features on electronic ignition for cars, how to improve a commercial tape-recorder and how to build a transistorised heart-monitor.

The Cold War was an ideological construction as well as a brute fact. American neurosis about its enemies emerged in many ways, including the McCarthy witch-hunts. And even the humble electronics press became a propaganda tool against America's great enemy, the Soviet Union.
'We're jamming, we're jamming'...1959 style

For example, In April 1959, beloved Electronics carried an description about the Russian jamming of Russian language broadcasts from the United States.

Will Bohrs describes a concerted effort to block transmissions of the Voice of America (Voa) with 2,500 jamming stations and satellites ranged against the 85 transmitters of Voa. (Popular Electronics, 1959:42) In his conclusion, Bohr notes:

'Careful screening of refugees pouring into Berlin from the east confirms the value of every dollar spent in the electronic war. Clandestine listening posts behind the Iron Curtain listen to the voices of freedom and description reception. Also letters smuggled out of the Soviet zones of influence attest to the impact these broadcasts have upon their audience.

It is therefore well known the [Voice of America] broadcasts... Are successful in combating the efforts to prevent the flow of information and truth from reaching the citizens of the Soviet Union.' (Popular Electronics, April 1959:44)

Probing in the dark: conferrence evidence in a atmosphere of fear

Popular Electronics during the mid Cold War showed readers how to accumulate evidence about national vigilance and competitiveness in the space race (satellite performance and domestic rocket launches.) It also ready them for the most dreaded possibility - nuclear attack.

Fallout monitor

In July, 1962, the the first page of a four-page highlight bears the headline: Radiation Fallout Monitor in white letters dramatically standing out against a dark background of solid grey. Superimposed are downward-pointing inverted triangles that stand for radioactive fallout.

Below the headline, the conventional radiation stamp appears, but with a red centre and three red segments instead of yellow.

Underneath the radiation symbol, the author, R.L Winklepleck , repeats a Federal Civil Defense administration warning:

'Most of us in this country...live within fallout range of some target which it might be foremost for the enemy to destroy.' (Popular Electronics, 1962: 37)

Winklepleck goes on to illustrate that fallout consists of 'particles of radioactive debris which have been carried into the upper air by the force of the blast.' (Popular Electronics, 1962: 37)

Winklepleck concludes his introduction by saying that although his circuit make will keep track of radiation in your neighbourhood by using a cheap Geiger-Mueller tube, 'the most dependable source of emergency information continues to be your local Civl Defense office.' (Popular Electronics, 1962: 38)
Cuban missile crisis

In October 1961 - a year before the Cuban Missile emergency - a beloved Electronics front cover trailed a piece inside: 'You wouldn't want to be an electronics hobbyist in the U.S.S.R.'

The with description is a show-case for the Us brain effort: 'It was in the pages of Radio [a Soviet electronics magazine] that the Russians revealed the first industrialized details of Sputnik I. So that their radio amateurs would be ready to listen for Sputnik's signals, the Soviet government published the exact frequencies, transmitting power and type of signal to be used by the satellite. All of this information appeared in the June, July and August 1957 issues - as much as four months before Sputnik caught the world by surprise.' (Popular Electronics, October 1961: 43-44)

Usa, one, Soviet Union, nil.

Less than a year later, another edition of the magazine tells readers how to listen to transmissions from Nasa satellites. (Popular Electronics, June 1962) By construction a receiver to tune into the 15-metre shortwave band, industrialized constructors could listen to transmissions from satellites - invariably with alphanumeric names such as Explorer Xii, Telstar I, S-51, Injun Sr-3 and Tiros Iv.

It Is Hardly Suprising That The estimation Of Distant Bangs And Whistles became a valid field for electronics magazines during the Cold War. If you had the technical knowledge to probe the radio-frequency part of the electromagnetic spectrum, you could feel materially related to the scheme of defeating communism.

From your loft, via a simple aerial, you could receive signals that were propagated tens of thousands of miles away. This is what I call 'electronic metonymy': the part (your aerial) contiguous with and connecting to the whole (a national and international project.)

In the same volume of beloved Electronics that discussed Russian jamming, a circuit was printed which showed readers how to detect missiles.

The description was accompanied by an oscilloscope trace showing the electronic noise recorded during the firing of the lunar probe rocket 'Pioneer' on October 11, 1958 at 3.42 a.m. Est. The circuit printed is essentially a radio capable of tuning-in to very low frequency electro-magnetic radiation. 'The yield of the unit may be plugged into... A general high-fidelity amplifier for added amplification to display, recording or listening levels.' (Popular Electronics, April 1959: 105)

It's quite an image: a whole family of good American citizens tuned in to Dad's circuit for listening to missile launches.

But the circuit doubles as a means of listening to nuclear tests, too, as the author, Charles H. Welch explains: 'In the case of an atomic explosion, the radio waves produced are similarly due to the violent request for retrial of particles in the actual blast, an to the column of ionised gases which rises afterward. [These signals] travel great distances with little attenuation...' (Popular Electronics, April 1959: 102-103)

However The commercial yield Of Missile-Launch Detection Kits was never a realistic proposition. Welch's description explains that it takes effort and skill to discriminate background noise from the noises produced by columns of ionised gases. It's also handy to have way to an oscilloscope - an item not found in many households, ever.

Electronics magazines have virtually faded away now, but those of the cold war duration are highly revealing about the national psyche of America.

It's a shame that electronics is no longer widely practised: now we just don't know how to build the little black boxes that tell us about missile launches.

But maybe a handful of practitioners still know how to light-up their oscilloscope screens with the spikes and squiggles that supervene rocket launches or atomic blasts. The rest of us can just switch on our televisions.

Clicks and Bangs: The Lost Art Of Detecting Atomic Tests

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