"Taking Hell's Measurements": Popular Science and Popular Mechanics Magazines and the Atomic Bomb from Hiroshima to Bikini

A variety of forms of American popular culture articulated and propagated the bright atomic future narrative, from music to comic books to general interest magazines such as Life. Perhaps some of the most significant of the popular periodicals to engage in sustained perpetuation of this particular narrative were the popular science and technology magazines, the pre-eminent being Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. Zeman examines the articulation and perpetuation of the bright atomic future narrative in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines in its formative period from the bombing of Hiroshima in Aug 1945 to the atomic tests at Bikini in July 1946. Before the Bikini tests, this transformation narrative was the dominant way in which Popular Science and Popular Mechanics narrativized atomic power.