In the 1940s and 1950s, the US Department Of Energy captured the development of nuclear
weapons on film.
With help from the United States Military, short movies were made that showed the process
of developing and testing these fearsome devices.
These films explained what happened behind the scenes.
They captured the procedures, the experiments, and the people who did the work.
Most importantly, nuclear explosions were recorded.
We are going to show you one of these films today.
It documents two nuclear tests carried out as part of Operation Greenhouse in 1951.
These tests were necessary for the United States to eventually develop thermonuclear
weapons, which are lighter and far more powerful than the first generation of nuclear bombs.
The documentaries created by the government in the 1950s, quite frankly, are full of propaganda.
But they still have interesting footage.
So we did our best to make this one watchable by modern audiences.
To do that, we have edited the video footage down from its original length of 22 minutes
to just slightly over 14 minutes.
We took the original audio and ran noise reduction and equalization to improve its quality.
And where possible we used video enhancements to improve the image quality.
Despite our best efforts, there are still imperfections.
The original video was very old and already damaged before being copied into a digital format.
But if you are fascinated by the development of nuclear weapons, then you should enjoy
this episode.
Personally, it just made me really angry.
We hope you enjoy this modified version of Operation Greenhouse.