Philip Morrison and Victor Weisskopf, "MIT and the Bomb Forty Years Later" - Compton Lecture (4/17/1985)

[MUSIC PLAYING]

LOW: I'm Francis Low. And let me welcome you here tonight. And let me start by calling on Mr. Greg Mitchell of the Student Disarmament Study Group, who would like to make an announcement. Mr. Mitchell--

MITCHELL: On behalf of the MIT Students Disarmament Study Group, I'd like to bring to your attention a project we've been working on for quite a while is within hours of reaching fruition. If you're interested in speaking with your congressman about arms race issues, now's your chance. Massachusetts students, staff, and faculty will be joining with thousands from across the nation tomorrow for a day of lobbying in Washington, DC. Buses will be leaving MIT at 11:00 PM this evening.

After a day at the capital, we'll arrive back in Boston early Friday morning. The cost us $30. All the appointments have been made with senators, and representatives, and their aides for all the states in our nation. If you're interested, please see us right outside the lecture hall after this evening's activities. And after that, there'll be a reception for Massachusetts lobbyists in room 407 of the Student Center. The trip should be quite exciting and a worthwhile experience for all. So thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

LOW: Let me welcome you again. My name hasn't changed. So I welcome you to this year's Compton Lecture. Tonight we mark the 40th year since the explosion of the first nuclear device in the New Mexican desert. 11 present and retired MIT professors were involved in that effort at Los Alamos that culminated in that event.

Hence, the title of today's set of talks and things happening 40 years after Los Alamos MIT and the bomb. Eight of those MIT faculty members are here tonight. I would also hope to see in that title a reflection of the commitment of so many members of my team's community to doing something about the situation in which we in the world find ourselves.

These Los Alamos veterans who are here tonight have participated, in lesser or greater degree, many with great devotion in that activity. They have worked throughout these 40 years to contain the effects of their terrible invention. Their work made war obsolete, but unfortunately it did not make war impossible.

The existence of nuclear weapons poses the greatest threat since Nemesis to the survival of life on Earth. And if not life on Earth, at least the survival of our civilization, civilization as we know it. I hope that the meeting tonight will help us think fruitfully and usefully about what we can do about these terrible questions.

I have to tell you-- I'm sorry to have to tell you that Joe Wiesner will be unable to join us. Mrs. Wiesner is in the hospital. It's not life threatening. But she is confined-- she is for the moment confined, leaving the hospital today in Florida. And he had to be with her. And he sends his best wishes and regrets. So we will hear tonight from the two others scheduled speakers.

After their talk, we are also honored to have with us tonight Mr. Bajpai, who is the ambassador from India to Washington. After their talk, I will ask him for a few comments. And after that, we will open the meeting to general discussion.

The two speakers are both old friends of mine and of many of us here. I can't imagine two different people. But when I think of how I should introduce them-- I have not been given a prepared vita-- I mean, actually their vitas are so long and so distinguished, that one couldn't do much with it anyway. But as I thought about what I want to say about them, the same things come to mind, although they are extraordinarily different people,

They are both physicists. They are both distinguished physicists. They are MIT Institute professors. They are incredibly learned, humane, humanist, two wonderful people. And--

[APPLAUSE]

And, of course, after they've talked, you'll tell the difference. And I have no titles. They'll give you their own titles. The first then is Victor Weisskopf-- Viki--

[APPLAUSE]

WEISSKOPF: My friends, I don't have a special title. 40 years after, thoughts inspired by those 40 years. 40 years ago, in the early morning hours of July 16, a truck driver in New Mexico reported that he saw the sun about to rise at 4:00 AM. But then the sun decided it was too early, and went back again, and came up an hour earlier-- an hour later. And that was, of course, the historic event of the first man-made atomic explosion, which some of you saw this afternoon in the movie.

I have witnessed this event, actually, roughly at the same-- actually, exactly at the same place as Phil. I remember we both were sitting together. The description we got from the army was that we should lie down with our stomachs-- on our stomachs, with our heads away from the explosion. Of course, we wouldn't dream to do that, because we wanted to see what's going on.

So after the generals who were there had put themselves into that position--

[LAUGHTER]

Phil and I, and many others there, took our dark glasses-- we figured out that the intensity should be roughly 20 midday suns at that distance, and looked at it, and tried to measure the size to estimate the efficiency and so on. It was, indeed, an incredible sight and an awesome experience, which hardly is desirable in words. Imagine the landscape lit up 20 times stronger than sunlight.

And even at that distance, we felt an intense blast of heat and a roaring thunder after three quarters of a minute. And we saw this steadily ascending fireball, made a brilliant hemisphere, up into a sphere, becoming slowly white, yellow, orange, surrounded by this blue halo.

And then finally, assuming the well-known mushroom shape. And then the sun actually went up and illuminated the whole thing with the red sunlight. Suddenly a credible impression that filled all of us with awe, with pride of unique achievement, and suddenly with misgivings about the future of mankind.

A few weeks after that trial, two bombs were thrown over two cities in Japan. Whatever one may think about the wisdom of the American use of the bombs, it did end the murderous war. And most probably saved many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, on both sides.

It may have saved many more than it has destroyed. We meant so well. And we served our country. And we thought that such powerful weapons would make wars impossible. And we hoped very much that this whole thing would lead to an international administration of every thing atomic or nuclear power in weapons. And then it would be an end of the old-- the age-old human custom of organized mutual mass murder.

We went out and gave talks to civic organizations, to the people in Santa Fe, and other cities nearby. And I remember I was quoting John Donne at that time-- no man is an island entirely for himself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. Never ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. And what we meant is that this will bring, finally, mankind together.

Well, we were naive and wrong. We should have known better. True enough, the existence of the bomb has kept peace for the last 40 years, at least, between the big powers. This is an unusually long period. But these powers have found only one way to maintain the state of affairs, to indulge in an ever-increasing arms race. More and more weapons were made.

And at this moment in history, I do believe that we are on a collision course. The nuclear armaments go ahead, accelerated. New types of weapons are introduced. Technical innovations that make the weapons more efficient, but any kind of arms control more difficult. [INAUDIBLE] the consequences of a potential military conflict become increasingly more [INAUDIBLE] with a total explosive power 6,000 times more than all the bombs that were exploded during the World War I.

Now this, to my mind, when only a 50th perhaps is necessary, complete [INAUDIBLE] this case of collective mental disease that has gripped humanity. And I think it will be seen as such in 30-40 years, if we survive. And all that came from us, from our work at Los Alamos and other of these laboratories. It came from our brain child, from our achievements 40 years ago.

Many statesmen and a good part of the public is today aware of the fact that the actual use of even a small part of all this would be the greatest catastrophe of mankind. But being aware is not enough. We must recognize why is it that we go on and increase the probability of the danger over nuclear war. Why must that threat, which supposedly keeps peace and did keep peace, why must this threat be multiplied all the time by a steadily increasing factor? Why cannot people in governments get their heads together and recognize-- and say, enough is enough and recognize the danger of all this?

I believe that one of the main reasons is that there are many kinds of fear. There is, for example, the fear of a first strike. Both sides are afraid that the other side [INAUDIBLE] and particularly the land based missiles before retaliation.

Now that fear is in many ways more irrational, because the US has more than half of its missiles in submarines, which are, at least for a good time, impossible to exactly locate, so they cannot be destroyed, most of them, at least. And the Russians have about a quarter of their missiles in submarines. And given the destructive power, if even one submarine-- it is plain that a first strike just could not disarm an adversary.

Another fear is the fear to be weaker than the other side. See, up to the mid -70s, the United States had considerably more weapons, nuclear weapons, than the Soviet Union. Although the latter had even at that time enough weapons to destroy us.

But since then, the Soviet Union has reached a sort of equality with us and that has people very uneasy, to say the least. But let me say, this increase of the Russian nuclear weapons, which happened in the second part of the '70s and beginning of the '80s is has been preceded by a very strong increase of the United States from about 2,000 to 8,000 at strategic points. So we are now roughly at the same level.

Ironically, just that approximate parity adds a lot to the present difficulties and to the arms race. Why? Because you never know. And there's a lot of secrecy, particularly on the other side. And therefore, you [INAUDIBLE] worst, and to think there are more weapons there. And therefore, has to build more and build them up.

This is one of the driving forces, of course, of the arms race. The second-- the third fear, actually, is of being out distanced-- out distanced in a certain type of weapon. For example, the Russians have actually more land based and we have more submarine weapons. So we think we have to have the same number of land based missiles. And the Russians have those big land based missiles.

And that is one reason why people want to build the MX. So actually, we're going to build the MX. And the Soviet Union, of course, on the other side, is going to build submarines, because they have fewer than we are. This is, again, and mechanism for escalation.

A third fear-- or this is now the fourth fear, comes from a perceived or an actual aggressive policy of the opponent. Both sides believe that the other side is bent on aggression, whereas they, themselves, act purely defensively. Of course, the US definitely says that what happened in Afghanistan is an aggressive act, or in Southeast Asia.

But this is seen by the other side as a defense effect, to ensure the security of their borders, where in Vietnam, the Russians to establish a counterbalance to the influence of China. Conversely, the US has a lot of defensive actions to prevent the spread of communist influence, for example in Central America, in the Middle East. And these are perceived, of course, by the Soviet Union as an attempt to build up Western influence wherever possible. And the recent Star War plans is a particular good example.

It is perceived by the Soviet Union as a preparation for first strike, because then we can have a first strike and at least the consequences of retaliation will be diminished, so that you can perhaps supposedly support them, which I don't believe, but perhaps they believe. So each military and political action abroad can be interpreted as aggressive or defensive by one side or the other. And during a political crisis, of course, such misrepresentations are extremely dangerous.

The lack of understanding comes, of course, from a very completely different system, social system, political system. We are afraid of the authoritarian regime of world communism, the lack of elementary human rights on the other side, the treatment of minorities, the suppression of freedom in the satellites and the homeland. That arouses fears in the United States. And vise-versa, the ideology of capitalist free enterprise, the human rights activities, the virulent anti-communism, strong support of right wing dictators, and lately the talk about liberating the world from the evils of communism, necessarily arouses fear in the Soviet Union, and not only in the leading circles.

Now, in order to understand a little more, I think that's a very important thing, the fears and the subsequent actions of our adversary, you must consider the present situation. Let me express it this way. There are four large power complexes-- China, the Soviet Union, Western Europe, United States. Three of them have one enemy-- or let me adversary-- the Soviet Union. One of them, the Soviet Union, has four-- namely the three others and its own population.

[LAUGHTER]

Now, it's no laughing matter for them. And this explains a lot of actions. For example, one of the reasons-- certainly one of the reasons of the large conventional forces in Soviet Union is the fear of revolts in Eastern Europe. The overly large number of Soviet SS 20 missiles is probably meant to deter the Western aid for revolts, possible revolts in Eastern Europe, and to support incipient anti-Soviet governments. Now, the fact that the West never has supported such movements does not allay their fears that they may do it in the future.

Now, these fears are important, but they are not the only cause of the armaments race. I am coming now to another very dangerous and important-- more and more important cause of the armaments race. And that is the increasing momentum of the military machine. Years of intense developments, and buildup of weapons, of means of delivery, of new methods to improve the accuracy, they've established and interwoven system of vested interests, of ambitious and dedicated groups unwilling to give up their successful activities, not only, or maybe not even very much, because of financial interests. Although, I'm sure this plays a role. But also, because of a natural commitment to pursue a difficult task, just when it's about to yield more and better results.

No doubt most participants believe that they will-- that what they do will enhance the security of the United States or the Soviet Union. But it is probably not so. How can an armaments race increase security? I remember this very well from personal experience in Los Alamos. I think this afternoon there was a little discussion, but I will still mention it now. Namely, in Los Alamos, we all-- most of us, like myself, and many of my friends, went to Los Alamos only because we were afraid that Hitler will make the bomb.

Still, when the bomb-- when Hitler was defeated, just about 40 years ago in May, there wasn't even discussion of quitting. We just worked on because we had also this technological momentum, that-- Oppenheimer uses this uncanny term, a technically sweet project. That's the danger.

Of course, the same danger of this momentum is also in our preparations on both sides, a preparation to engage in a nuclear war. Strategies and tactics are developed. An escalating search for military targets to be hit in case. And the more such targets are found, the more bombs have to be deployed to hit them. Should the deterrents fail, so goes the argument, nuclear war may be come and we must be prepared to prevail in a limited nuclear war.

But, of course, a nuclear war very probably cannot be limited. The losing side will be forced to escalate. Two archers facing one another, saying the tighter I draw the bow, the safer I become. Unfortunately, also these preparations are fueled by their own momentum. The more developments going on, the more possibilities of attacks are found, as I said. The more pressures develop for deployment.

And such preparations made a certain sense in the past, when war was really acceptable as the last assault for which we must be well prepared. In my hometown, in Vienna, there is a monument. And it says on the monument, [SPEAKING LATIN] For those who don't know Latin, it means when you wish for peace, prepare for war. Today's that slogan can no longer be applied. To prepare for nuclear war is to prepare for mutual suicide.

So the arms race is the product of irrational fears felt by both contending powers. And there is a self-perpetuating mechanism that creates its own momentum and increases the fears, and draws all the activities into its whirlpool. And this is why the present confrontation is so dangerous.

This is the first part of my talk. Now, I would like to use the rest of the time to those thoughts that must come to people who are involved with these questions. What have we learned now from what happened in the last 40 years? And how can we see a hopeful future? Which I do-- I don't believe-- at least I feel in my bones that we won't be all destroyed. But only if we do something about it.

Now, the last four decades have taught us one important lesson. Negotiations to reduce the level of nuclear weapons have very little chance of success in the prevailing atmosphere of confrontation, distrust, and increasingly offensive and defensive weapon developments. To the contrary, there is a danger of the erosion of even those few treaties that did slow down the armaments race, like SALT I and SALT II.

Perhaps, I should like to make a remark. SALT I has an interesting part, which many of you know, namely the ABM Treaty, which says that you are not supposed to defend yourself against strategic missiles. So quite so, you are allowed to have one or two establishments for that. Actually, the United States has not used it at all and the Russians have one, Moscow.

Now, this was a very difficult development. And I remember at that time, I was active in the Pugwash movement. From '64-- that treaty was concluded in the '70s-- '72. From '64 on, we tried to talk with the Russian scientists to tell them that such defenses are dangerous, because all they will do is to increase the number of offensive warheads, so that an equilibrium, so-called equilibrium is established. It was difficult to convince the Russians. Indeed, the Russian scientists used the same arguments which you hear today from our government-- defense obviously is good, how can defense be bad? We must defend ourselves.

And it took us many years, but we succeeded, not only to convince the scientists, our government, at that time, was also of that opinion. And the scientists that came to Pugwash, of course, had very strong connections with their government, or they wouldn't be allowed to come out to the West. And they were able to convince their government really to sign that treaty, which to some extent has reduced the speed of the armaments race, though it didn't turn it around.

But the interesting thing, I tell this only because of the application of today. Today the situation seems to be reversed. The same group of scientists that convinced, at that time the Russian scientists, that defense, that kind of defense against missiles will only increase the armaments race, we are not successful in convincing our government, our present government of this. And vise versa, the Russians now, who we had a hard time to convince, now say exactly that idea and repeat it, and probably with good justification.

Well, this is just to say that there were certain efforts already before, during these 40 years. But there is now a chance that all these treaties-- I wrote it-- for example, the Star War project, of course, would, if it actually goes into the testing and development phase, would be a breach of the ABF Treaty, which has saved us so far from too much development.

Is there a chance that we can arrive at a different attitude? Evidently, we must. There are compelling reasons. And that is sort of clear to everybody. And their main point is that nuclear weapons must be regarded not as weapons of war, but their only purpose is to deter their use by the other side. And for this, of course, we have much fewer than we have at present.

Now, how can we change those causes which I've analyzed before, limiting mutual fears and the driving forces of increasing armament efforts? Well, we must be aware that the present situation, the present confrontational of the situation, inducing fear in the opponent is against one's own interest. It only escalates the armaments race.

Fear, of course, is not an objective fact, like the number of warheads. It arises from interpretation or misinterpretations of statements and actions by the other side. Now, what could be ways to reduce fears and distrust. I think an indispensable first step is an awareness of the problem.

For example, every statement and every action on both sides should be examined with the view as to how will it be interpreted on the other side. Will it increase or reduce the fear and distrust? Obviously, you can easily see examples that increase the fear. The deployment of MX, the deployment of the Trident II submarines that are accurate enough to hit their missiles, on our side, increase fear. The great number, the heavy SS18s and the recent preparations for deployments of mobile missiles by the Soviet Union increases the fear. Of course, SS20 in Europe also.

Well, how can we deal with those fears? For example, how can we deal with the fear of superiority? Let's be sure, today both sides, the East and the West maintain that opponent is militarily stronger. You can read this in our paper and you can read it in their papers. As remarked before, it is not so much the reality that counts, but the perception.

Therefore, we must not only strive to maintain an offensive and defensive parity, because if we try to be superior, we only accelerate the arms race, because evidently they cannot allow us to be superior. Perhaps I should search your one little remark. One could say, aha, we're are now technologically so far ahead that we can become superior and they cannot follow us.

That would be the most dangerous situation, because then they would become-- they would fear that we will use our superiority for blackmail, that they have to give in here and there. That's probably also the rationale of those people who are in favor of superiority. But then they become irrational. And governments become very easily irrational. And they will put on the wall and they will react in some way, which induces a war.

Now, therefore, we must be sure that both the East and the West have also the perception of being on parity. That means one of the most important things is to have some negotiations that have the aim to make it clear, to discuss how is parity meant. We must put ourselves a the little in their shoes to understand it. And we rarely do this.

I'll give you an example. The present dispute over the number of intermediate range missiles in Europe. The Soviets-- well, we say we have to put all these missiles into European countries because they have 10 times more missiles, intermediate missiles then we have, the SS20. But of course, the Soviets count the French and British missiles, and find then that both sides are about equal. Now, we leave them out.

Imagine, for example-- now here, one has to use the mirror argument and put oneself in the other's position. Imagine, for example, if they would not count missiles they have put into Hungary, or Poland, or Cuba as missiles against us. I mean, one has to have the most primitive understanding for the problem.

So there should be bilateral discussion, or maybe multilateral discussions, because the Allied countries on both sides are very much interested in this. They don't want to be unprotected witness in the defensive build up or launching pads in an offensive build up.

Another thing is, in order to get down the fear of aggression. And we must have a better understanding of their motivations of their actions. Here, the national body for crisis management would, of course, be just an important step. That body would discuss actual or potentially expected political and military events. There already exist such a bilateral body-- the standing Consultative Commission, that deals with supposed or real infractions of the treaties, and it has been very useful in the past to smooth-- to get difficulties out of the way.

Nowadays, when so-called perceived infractions are right away widely publicized, and so the Commission is no longer so effective. But there is a reason that we should have as similar, of course, much harder task, of international monitor, or maybe later on, multilateral body that discusses possible crisis.

Now, there are obviously military measures that could be taken to reduce fears. We could, for example, reduce our potential, our strategic potential by 10% or 20% without weakening our position. In particularly, we could reduce first strike capabilities, because we can't use them anyway. And the [INAUDIBLE] of never using nuclear weapons first, that would be also a very important thing, because a declaration not to commit suicide shouldn't be so difficult.

Of course, the Western Europeans always think, and they reason, with some justification, that the nuclear deterrence is important against a conventional attack. But this reasoning is based upon a very questionable assumption, namely that a suicide threat is an effective deterrent. So these are problems which we have to attack.

Now, one trivial case. And that is that there are 8,000 small nuclear weapons, so-called battlefield weapons, around in Europe. And of course, both sides, roughly this number. And those make really no sense at all on the countries. They're extremely dangerous. By the way, they aren't that small. There are some of them that are as big as the Hiroshima explosions, some of you have seen this afternoon.

There is a real good chance of a successful negotiation on that, because actually, the US has already reduced them unilaterally somewhat. And it's obviously an advantage to have a higher threshold against the outbreak of a nuclear conflagration. But these are all smaller measures.

What is necessary, and certainly, what the last 40 years have shown then is to reduce tension by other and more effective methods. We need a deeper change of attitude from this paranoid distrust. [INAUDIBLE] is-- the US and the SU-- I like the symmetry in the abbreviations-- are not enemies, they're adversaries. They have one common enemy and that is nuclear war. And they have many common interests, apart from escaping mutual nuclear annihilation.

I'd like to talk a little about that, because this is important. Because to work together on other dangers is helpful for mutual understanding. The world is, for example, threatened by the increase, the steady increase of carbon dioxide, which will change the climate. It may melt the ice sheet. We don't know much about it, but coastal cities may disappear.

I saw a map the other day of what could have happened, which Florida is gone, Holland is gone, the whole coastal east is gone. They don't care about this. Then they have the chemical pollution, the atmosphere is threatened, threatens animals and vegetation. The acid rain, and other things-- the death of the forests, which in Europe is a major catastrophe and probably will come to this country and the Soviet Union pretty soon. We have so far protected because our population density is not as high.

Now here are things that need scientific investigation, that need scientific collaboration, that need big projects. But where are our scientists, they go into defense, what we call defense. They go into all this weapons development and the financial support goes there, whereas there are many other dangers. And I've only mentioned two. There are many more-- pollution of the oceans, overpopulation, over-exploitation of soil, famine, et cetera, et cetera. So all these dangers threaten both superpowers. And here's a wonderful opportunity for cooperation, which will reduce fear and distrust.

Now and even the transfer of scientific and technical interests to other aims and weapon [INAUDIBLE] would even help to counteract the self-propelling momentum of the armaments effort. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but one should try. So there are, of course-- there is, of course-- well, then commerce. We should have much more in commerces, so that we are sort of interdependent of each other. That is a help and not a danger, as it is often described.

Europe is a little ahead of us. They have the gas line from Soviet Russia. They live a much more-- they have much more commerce with the Soviet Union, et cetera. But of course, one of the main obstacles is always the question of human rights. How can you collaborate with a system that treats its citizens that way? But I think that's just the other way around. It is bad that they treat their citizens, but you must fight it, and you must tell it, and you must talk about it.

But by not having any collaboration and cooperation with them, we make things only worse, as we do. Since the so-called detente. Detente, unfortunately, is a bad word now. But it's a lessening of tension. It's just what we want. Now, since the last detente, since detente has stopped, only there are even more persecutions, and more bad things, more restrictions of civil and human rights in the Soviet Union.

So to be in touch with them, to be able to talk directly to them, and they're coming here and looking at the way we live, is, of course, much more important. We should not hope that we can change the system. The last opportunity to change a despicable political system by force was the Second World War. And it was pretty expensive. From now on, we just can't do it if that system is a big power and has nuclear weapons.

So the only hope of changing what happens in Russia is a slow improvement, which would probably take a long time. But it can only happen if fear, confrontation, and distrust subsides. And let's see, technocrats come to power, and who don't-- for whom ideological questions are of no importance.

These are the lessons which we should draw from the sad experience of the past 40 years, when our great hopes 40 years ago for a better world without conflicts were temporarily dashed. There's still hope for hope for the next 40 years. The threat of nuclear war has kept an uneasy peace. It has given us time. There is a meta stable situation. But it's only a meta stable. It will not last forever.

So we have still time to learn the lesson, to change the present course, which in the long run, is a collision course. But this will require the collaboration of all of you, in particular the young people. Because it's the young people who will decide what happens. And if they do not participate actively in this fight, by talking, discussing, writing to congressmen, and trying to influence colleagues, et cetera, we will not get very far.

It will require political and military insight, and an understanding of the psychology of the adversary, and a great deal of wisdom, and the readiness to compromise, none of which was much in evidence during the last 40 years. But progress must be based, and all what you do must be based on an absolute pragmatic, ethical, and moral dedication to the aim that nuclear war should not, cannot, and must not occur.

My colleagues and I constructed the atomic bomb. If we hadn't, other people would have done it sooner or later. What nature has made possible cannot be avoided. But the lessons we draw from it, and what we do with it, that depends on us, not on nature. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

LOW: Thank you, Viki. The next speaker is Professor Philip Morrison. Phillip--

[APPLAUSE]

MORRISON: Thank you. I'm afraid that among the pleasures of such discussion we miss the chance for sharp disagreement, which always bring some learning. We'll have to forego that, because we are somehow too similar in point of view. I shall try not to repeat any of the wise remarks, but to fit carefully in between them with footnotes. We'll see how that scheme works.

I too could begin with a memo that came across my desk just yesterday, literally, in the mail. It was something which I myself wrote 40 years ago. It was the quasi official and rather over formal, careful presentation of my experiences at the Trinity site on July 16, morning, 1945, which was stuck in the files of the Los Alamos laboratory all these years. And some author has dug them out, along with many others. And he thought I'd be interested. And I was, of course, interested to see it again.

I remember the main point, which is the first paragraph which I begin. It's the same memory that Viki has. [INAUDIBLE] at base camp. At 18,000 yards, 10 miles, must have had the same experience. The site was awesome. The sound was extraordinarily. We were prepared for that.

What I was somehow not prepared for, by the calculations and discussions we had had, was the sense of warmth on the face, as hot as summer moon, just for a fraction of a second or a second. And coming in the cold desert morning, well before dawn, this is an extraordinary experience, indelible. Because, of course, that kind of sensory input, with such an live channel of input, is something that you remember beyond the vision, beyond the sound, beyond the rational and awesome consequences that we could draw.

Two of my old colleagues at Los Alamos, one of whom I think is in this room, have been much impressed by this same memory. And have repeatedly written and spoken, at least tentatively, concerning the possible wisdom of having an occasional ceremonial above-ground test of a nuclear device, somewhere in the desert or the broad Pacific, to which we invited the heads of state or the representatives, so they too might be at base camp, 10 miles away, and feel the heat on the face.

This may be a very ingenuous view of how statesmen minds are changed. But it is not without it's-- not without its persuasiveness. And I hope to hear more about that as time goes on. Now I'd like to put the whole thing into a little bit more history, as usual by case studies, which is the way I deal with history. And I would like to tell you something which I fell into by the persuasiveness of another colleague, Professor Zacharias, who is here.

Some years ago, maybe a decade ago or more, I was caused by his persuasion to go to Oklahoma City, a place I rarely visit.

[LAUGHTER]

But in Oklahoma City, I met a remarkable man. It was his birthday. He was a leader of the community. I shan't describe all his virtues. But he was a man who was then celebrating his 100th birthday. One doesn't get a chance to meet articulate people with that kind of extensive historical experience. And we sat in each other at lunch.

And since I was a physicist, and he was interested in that, he told me the following remarkable story. Which begins, in my view, it was the beginning of the 20th century in physics. Physicists never get things quite straight. So for us the 20th century begins in 1896.

Now, in January 1896, this man was a young student in the freshman physics course at Colorado College. And he was professor came in that morning, having seen the paper, and said, the Rockaway News is coming, the newspaper. Today. I'm going to cancel the lecture I was planning, and the work that you're supposed to do, I urge you-- I invite you to work with me this morning. And together, if all of us work hard, we'll be able to do something quite wonderful.

Because a German professor, far off in [INAUDIBLE] Professor Rankin has today published how to make ras that will allow him to take photographs of the bones in the living hand, right through the flesh. You can see the skeletal shape. And his equipment is straightforward. He describes it-- we have that same equipment here in our shop. If we work hard, I think by the end of the morning we'll have accomplished this fact. Perhaps, we'll be the first in the entire United States to do so.

So indeed they fell to with a will. And my 100-year-old acquaintance remembered going to the last moment, to the chapel, to fetch a big thick Bible, so they could take a photograph of a key through a book, which is the other great demonstration of the X-rays. And indeed, it worked just as they said. And they were very happy and contented. The morning was well spent.

It took them in Colorado, thousands of miles from the centers for research, it took them a mere few hours to duplicate this remarkable discovery. They were not the first. And not the first for a simple geographical reason. In Colorado, not because of the indolence of the people, but because of the roundness of the Earth. The sun rises two hours later that it rises in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and so on. Because it's on Mountain time.

And therefore, when they were just assembling, when hearing the professor's news to the newspaper, the New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New England, their [INAUDIBLE] had already been at work two hours. And indeed, all across the United States, perhaps in half a dozen colleges, in a rather provincial country, from the point of physics research in 1896, the X-rays had been duplicated. There's no question that this discovery this was in the medium, and it simply required crystallization to make it appear. The nucleus was all you had to drop in.

Now, exactly the same situation-- I only realized in the last couple of months, preparing lectures for our course-- exactly the same situation applied to the discovery of nuclear fission. When fission was described correctly by Meitner and [INAUDIBLE] in terms that they worked out in Christmas vacation in 1938, and was announced to the world, across the world, from Japan, to the Soviet Union, every place where there was a halfway respectable department of physics with nuclear physics interests, was able to duplicate the effect right away.

And in a couple of day, showed the fission pulses on an oscilloscope to anybody who would ask. Pulses 50 times more intense than the pulses from alpha particle emission, which was quite common to see in the same display. So you see, this is the example of two cases-- I know of no others really like that-- two cases where fundamental change occurred, in a sense, long overdue.

The community was ready for it. The instruments had been used widely and developed for the purpose. The [INAUDIBLE] was available everywhere. The photographic plate was available everywhere. There was no problem. Just the right combination had not been found. And once that combination was given, the box was unlocked all over the world. And the same thing happened with fission.

Many people failed to discover fission in the three years before it was discovered. By this or that small failure, it was just chance led them to put an extra piece of scotch tape across the sample. That's an actual case. Not to be able to turn the knob far enough and the design spectrograph to catch the energy of the next X-ray line. A number of other events like that, which prevented the premature, so to speak, discovery of fission.

So that in a way-- and this is again what Viki said-- the matter has the property of the release, the large scale release of nuclear energy. And it came to us as a extraordinary discovery. But it came, of course, in a different context. It was not 1896, but early 1939.

World War began in late 1939. And was sealed, most people feel, by the Munich events of the fall of 1938. This we felt all over, and in California, where I was. Within a month, after we first heard of fission, I, myself, remember-- and I was no expert, and didn't understand, except for the most elementary way, the nature of neutron diffusion. Drew on the board in [INAUDIBLE] 219, which we graduate students shared in the [INAUDIBLE] room of Robert Oppenheimer, a drawing of a nuclear weapon, with the key words-- deuterium, and chain, and all those things that you might now associate with it.

It was very naive. Would not have worked. But was not the result of serious effort. It was just what was in the air. It was the climate of opinion. And so it seems very difficult to avoid the conclusion that we were in for, one way or another, to face this problem. What did happen, as a consequence of this strange chance, was the close coincidence between the opening of this possibility and the outbreak of the war, stimulated by the most virulent, self-declared, aggressive regime in the history of Europe for centuries.

This was a piece, perhaps, of bad luck. Total war was implied by the headlines of the events. And here was the device, embryonic device, suited intrinsically to that particular activity. And that, perhaps, is the historical tragedy, which we could not have controlled, but which we certainly have to recognize.

Now, the institutions that are responsible for this are the most dominant institutions in our lives. They have been so for 300 years, about. That's not as old as modern science, which goes back now about 400 years. But these three or four centuries have seen the simultaneous growth of the two most important institutions of contemporary life. I think it's plain what they are.

They are nations, national states, on the one hand, and science and its conscious application technology, both ways, on the other hand. These two institutions represent the modern world in many ways. And if you look at the pages of the books, of history, you'll see them on every page, increasingly strongly as the centuries have come by.

They have very different ideals. They have very different origins. One speaks for diversity, universality. The other speaks for adherence, coherence, pride in limited community. True, [INAUDIBLE] specialization has lost some of its universality, specialization, both in place and in nature. But, of course, the national state has, in fact, perhaps has become somewhat larger. But still, is primarily much in the form that the revolutionaries of France, or the United States, for that matter, would have recognized as the formation of a nation.

And nation building and nation forming has never been more vigorous than it has been since the energy released first after World War I, when the great empires of Europe crashed, and then World War II, when the great empires that held colonial sway across the countries also crashed in their turn-- Holland, the British Commonwealth, and so on.

Now, in the days of the enlightened, it's hard to believe how these two institutions fitted with each other. And it's very difficult to satisfy yourself that it's the same way, from the present day, that it's that way. But it was that way. And there are many reasons. I shan't elaborate that much. You can see them for yourselves. But I just wanted to mention two.

When Captain Cook set sail on his wonderful expedition to explore the-- to look for a Southern continent, measure the transit of Venus, and explore the Pacific for His Majesty, our country, which was at war with Great Britain, a Revolutionary War in full energy, through its brilliant scientific ambassador to Paris, Mr. Franklin, wrote a letter to all our commanders at sea, saying, by no means attack Captain Cook's vessel. Give him free passage. He sails not as a British ship, not as a ship of the British Navy, but as a representative of science. What he does will only enhance the virtues to all mankind, including the United States of America, and gave him safe conduct.

It's hard to believe that would happen today. Even later, even later when Colonel William Lambton was engaged by the East India Company, not even the British state, but an agent of the state, the East India Company, to begin the great triangulation, which has led to the modern Indian survey, beautifully mapped from Himalayas to the Cape, his great fundamental theodolite that was to be used to establish the principle geodetic coordinates, was sent by sea and captured by a French ship-- a disaster. No.

Three or four years later, no great delay in the circumstances of 1808 or 1810, when it was, it appeared, by courtesy of the French Academy, who said they had no interest in depriving Colonel Lambon of his wonderful instrument. And there was. Please use it and publish the maps.

Well, it was a time you may say was ingenuous. Of course, it was a time when science did not have the power, did not generate the power yet. The power was, of course, in the hands of armorers, always had been. But it was technology, and not yet much influenced by the more rational abstract qualities that we see in post-Galilean science.