JF Ptak Science Books Post 2741
“Atomic Bomb” appeared in print for the first time thirty years before there was one. It appeared in H.G. Wells’ The World Set Free, written in 1913 and published in 1914, evidently before the appearance of the guns of August later in that year. The “set free” part of the world in Wells’ hands doesn’t come without an atomic struggle, though, much of the novel being a stage-up for the last bit in which people realize that atomic-bombing everything everywhere is not the way to go.
There are other atomic-conjoined terms in this book besides “bomb”, and they are somewhat telling of the period. Wells does make a good strike with “atomic bomb”, “atomic ammunition”, and “atomic power”, and then goes on to describe the other bits that could benefit from this atomicity, including “atomic aeroplanes”, “atomic hay lorries”, “atomic traction engines”, “atomic riveters” (riveting at twice the pace of a human), and “atomic smelters”. So there are some weak spots here and there in his 57 mentions of “atomic-something”, and that’s okay—he did some pretty good sightseeing into the future with the bomb.
And he was definitely the first to use “atomic bomb”, according to many sources and not the least of which is the OED (which also provides another interesting example of the word in use, quoting the Yale Review in 1917 “When you can drop just one atomic bomb and wipe out Paris or Berlin, war will have become monstrous and impossible”.) “Atomic-bombed”, “atomic bombing”, and “Atomic bomber” do not make their appearance in the English language until after August 6 in 1945.
The first view of the atomic bomb in Wells finds that there not one but three of them, all contained in a “coffin-shaped box”, and even with a 2′ diameter were small enough to be stored under a person’s legs. The “essential element” in its construction was a substance named “Carolinum1”, which thus far had been “tested only in almost infinitesimal quantities within steel chambers embedded in lead”.