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 picture 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 concentration of spikes and waves.

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 opportunity to use it.

The North Korean atomic test has deeply aggravated the anxiety of the US and other states concerned about the foreign policy 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 available to consumers in the USA and Great Britain. At the time, a significant number of people were around 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 ability to build a television set for home use out of components from disused radar circuitry.

Old-school electronics

An A5-sized monthly called Popular 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 thriving and many circuits were for listening or transmitting equipment. Hi-Fi was another popular 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, Popular Electronics carried an article 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 report 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: gathering evidence in a climate of fear

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

Fallout monitor

In July, 1962, the the first page of a four-page feature 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 symbol 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 important for the enemy to destroy.’ (Popular Electronics, 1962: 37)

Winklepleck goes on to explain 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 design will keep track of radiation in your neighbourhood by using a cheap Geiger-Mueller tube, ‘the most reliable 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 crisis – a Popular Electronics front cover trailed a piece inside: ‘You wouldn’t want to be an electronics hobbyist in the U.S.S.R.’

The accompanying article is a show-case for the US intelligence effort: ‘It was in the pages of Radio [a Soviet electronics magazine] that the Russians revealed the first advanced details of Sputnik I. So that their radio amateurs would be prepared 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 building a receiver to tune into the 15-metre shortwave band, advanced 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 MEASUREMENT OF DISTANT BANGS AND WHISTLES became a valid subject 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 connected to the project 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 Popular Electronics that discussed Russian jamming, a circuit was printed which showed readers how to detect missiles.

The article 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 output of the unit may be plugged into… a normal high-fidelity amplifier for further 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 motion 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 PRODUCTION OF MISSILE-LAUNCH DETECTION KITS was never a realistic proposition. Welch’s article 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 access to an oscilloscope – an item not found in many households, ever.

Electronics magazines have virtually faded away now, but those of the cold war period 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 perhaps a handful of practitioners still know how to light-up their oscilloscope screens with the spikes and squiggles that follow rocket launches or atomic blasts. The rest of us can just switch on our televisions.

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