As a filmmaker, the atomic bomb may seem less likely to have Kodak’s role in America’s development. But this new book tells the story of how the filmmakers on both sides in WWII became integral to their country’s war efforts, which start the age of nuclear weapons and the subsequent Cold War.
The moment you travel to the shutter until the moment you pull out the negatives developed from the tank in the darkroom, holding an image on a photographic film, first and foremost, is a chemical process. The grains of the suspended silver helide in an acetate emulsion catch light; The chemical developer converts these exposed grains of silver salt to visible, metal silver; And finally, a fixer is applied to dissolve the solution and remove unauxposed silver halides. The result is an image in the film emulsion that is in the form of small spots of metal silver.
This chemistry may seem to be one million miles away from the technique required to develop all nuclear weapons, but it may surprise you to know that the creation of a role of a photographic film and the creation of an atomic core of an atomic bomb is more than what you can actually think.
This is the new book of Alice Lovely to us, “Terrorist Chemistry Stories: Film Factory in a century of war,“It is scheduled for release on 26 August.
At the core of her book, Alice Love Joy told an untold story to the War Department of the US War Department during World War II and sought it with its top mystery Manhattan project To develop a atomic bomb. At that time there was a lot of urgency around this project. It was believed that Nazi Germany was also well in the way of making atomic bombs, and the Allies were very terrible to consider the consequences of allowing this to happen before their own weapons developed.
As the producer of the photographic film, you may be surprised as to why all companies will be sought by the US Army to help Kodak develop atomic bombs, but there were many factors that made Kodak an ideal partner for it.
First, the Kodak Company was not a stranger for war production, during the First World War, the army was provided resources and materials which were necessary for war attempts. These included not only the necessary films and equipment for aerial reconnaissance photography, which you can expect, but also hosting other resources, including varnish or “dope”, which applies to the canvas airframe of military aircraft – a product that was taken directly from his work to Kodak to develop better film images.
Second, the attempt to build the first atomic bombs required massive investment in chemical construction to generate the rich uranium fuel required for the explosive core of the atomic bomb. Manufacturing would require infrastructure scale that was unprecedented for a war -time project, and such a large -scale manufacturing was an area in which Kodak performed excellently. As Ellis Lovely displays so clearly and insight in her book, if you take one step back and look at ways in which photographic film and atom bomb are produced, they may look like very different products. However, the necessary operations at the core of their manufacturing processes include large -scale acquisition of natural resources and their chemical changes in special, man -made compounds that are engineers with a unique set of properties for a specific purpose.
The acetate base of the photographic film emulsion is taken from a large amount of wood pulp or cellulose extracted from cotton and is chemically modified to keep it out in thin sheets to make the film’s role. Uranium -235 -rich fission with isotopes should be practically extracted by atom from tons and tons of uranium ore, which includes mostly unusable (at least for nuclear weapons) uranium -238 isotopes.
The truth about the race to achieve these natural resources is sometimes away from beautiful. One of the deep chapters of the book describes the frightening conditions, under which the congregations were forced by the colonial government of Belgium to make a uranium ore to mine from the abundant deposits of their country at that time – a huge deal will eventually find its way for a large -scale uranium prosperous facilities for the field of Atlantic.
This brand of inhuman exploitation is also a recurring subject in the book for the purpose of extracting and processing natural resources. While Kodak was becoming an integral part of the American war attempt, Nazi was pressed in Germany to serve the AGFA (aktigeesellschaft Für Anilinfabrikation) in the service of German war attempt, which became a part of the notorious IG Farben Industrial Cartel, which uses concentration camps.
Like Kodak in the US, AGFA’s chemical expertise will also be leveraged for the production of detonators and explosives. During the conflict, several bombs, artillery shells, and hand grenades were exchanged between the Allies and Axis powers, which would be components produced by Kodak and AGFA – which wept far away from the products of these companies that were producing during Mayuram.
Another very interesting aspect of the Manhattan project that I learned from this book is a large extent of the huge role that women played in the race to make atomic bombs. In fact, most of the workers operating the huge uranium enrichment features of Kodak at Oak Ridge in Tennessee were women. Many of these women did terrifying jobs, which were needed to continuously and extremely to focus on production, and women who were trained for these roles were highly prized to pay attention to their tenacity, patience and expansion.
After the surrender of Germany and its colleagues in Europe, it will be atomic bombs developed by the Manhattan project that will write the last chapter in the global conflict and end the war in the end. After testing the first atomic bomb in Almogordo in New Mexico (present with more than 50 cameras, all the codes loaded to record the event for the poster with the film), Hiroshima and Nagasaki cities will use weapons against Japanese. Bombs effectively level each city center, killing hundreds of thousands – many of them immediately fell into the second partition after the arms explosion.
With the age of nuclear weapons and the subsequent Cold War, Kodak was once again a company that produced primarily a photographic film because it was before the war, but would be difficult to shake its nuclear heritage. In a large turn of irony, as the US had prepared for testing nuclear weapons for decades, radioactive isotopes that Kodak had once helped in construction, now being released to release in the atmosphere to go towards the east -east in midwestern plains – which passes around Great Lakes and change the wood and wood grood. These radioactive particles will manifest themselves as small spots and fogging on unaccompanied film – photons of ioning radiation, which triggers the chemical reaction of silver halides in the emulsion, such as a photon like visible light. Starting with the Trinity Test, in which the atomic bomb was exploded in 1945 in Almogordo long ago, through all the decades after the nuclear test, the Kodak factory in Rochester, the NY radioactive isotopes will become a cosmic canary in the coal mine for the coal mine, which was putting the mankind in the atmosphere through testing of nuclear weapons.
There is another very amazing footnote for this incredible story. In 2023, Hollywood director Christopher Nolan, who will greatly achieve the story of the Manhattan project to the widespread audience, in the digital media dominated era, Kodak will have to do so using a 70 mm film of Kodak. The film Stock was based on the same cellulose acetate manufacturing process that originally brought Kodak to the Manhattan project.
The historical tale of this compelling and large -scale research book has many more attractive twists and turns. As a lover of film photography and history, I found “terrorist chemistry” as a revatting reid, and I would not hesitate to recommend anyone who loves history or just telling great story. Despite the technical nature of her subject matter, Alice Lovely never let the story be reduced in technical detail, only to share the story to share it, as well as to share the reader to share what is happening.
At the end of the day, it is a story about the transformational power of chemistry and those who are able to master its subtle magic can change the world. Until I read this book, it was not for me that the chemistry required to make a photographic film or the role of a nuclear bomb was more common than your imagination. Take a fundamental metal and mix it with a halogen to make a metal halide, and you can create a light-sensitive surface, on which you can record an image of your city in bright sunlight-or you can make the same city in a blind flash of light.
The next time you are pulling your negative out of the developing tank, to do something.
Alice Lovely’s “Tales of Terrorist Chemistry: Film Factory in a century of warOn August 26, Amazon will be available to buy.
