The name of the museum is the Atomic Testing Museum where it’s located here in Las Vegas, Nevada about a mile from the street which is very convenient to visitors to come here. Then last on the ground nuclear test took place here with the Nevada test site it was in September 1992. And so people got together and they decided well the best way to preserve it of course is to have a museum.
I came to the Nevada test site as a young public health service officer of January 8, 1962. And I started out as a monitor. I was out there in the field and measuring the radio activity. But we have 1300 and 75 square miles of Nevada test site that’s larger than the state of Rhode Island. The Nevada test site have probably 10 to 12000 people working and we were building up our nuclear weapons in the stock file and so I was very busy.
We’re back in the 50’s for atmosphere testing occasionally and some of the test the larger test you can break windows in Las Vegas. And during the underground testing days the more exciting thing is when the high rise shake and the Californians we thought it was an earthquake so we come up running out of their rooms because of the ground motion.
Well, when you come into the museum and it’s like you're on the 1945 and it’s the concern that the Nazis would come up with an atomic bomb and then it will take you through the trinity test which was the first testing of atomic bomb on July 16, 1945. And then takes you through the year of the 50s, in atomic testing in the 50’s and atmospheric testing.
We have a pop culture display here in the museum and it’s primarily things that would put together from the 50s and so at the advertising and some of the activities, the cereal—the Kix cereal for example I have little goodies in it and a little atomic type of goodies and it’s up. It was an exciting area, people were really, I mean it was new, it was unique and people really took—really like it.
Then where I’m sitting now is one of the galleries in the museum and recreates an office back in the 50s and as a matter of fact looks like an office when I first came out here in 1962, would be typical great furniture which last and first for several years into the 60s. I don’t recall as we had computers in those days that we have typewriters and we have radio communications but that’s probably sophisticated that we've got.
Then you go into the underground testing area and we have a great display of what the Physics laboratories look like that you send down hole or lower down hole with the nuclear device and all the diagnostics. It’s very complex experiments and very costly experiments.
Then we go into other programs here at the Nevada test site. And then we have a gallery there that has a great display of radiation survey instruments and some of the old ID badges looked like and what some of the decimeters from badges and decimeters that people wore to measure their exposures to radioactivity. I think the Atomic Testing Museum is such a unique venue so when you come to Las Vegas, there are other things to do beside gambling and spending your time in the Casinos, people can come and learn about the history of atomic testing which caused Nevada played a huge role during the Cold War.
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