Exponential Innovations: The Tensions Of The Cold War

Improved Essays
Exponential Innovations: The Tensions of The Cold War

The world was thrust into the Atomic era by Fat Boy and Little Man, the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WWII (Nelson 212). These bombs served as a demonstration to the world of the immense power created by splitting the atom. This fostered the exigence for the prevailing global superpowers, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the United States (US), to develop larger, more destructive nuclear weapons as each side braced its country for the possibility of global, thermonuclear war. By the mid-1950’s, both the US and the USSR developed nuclear weapons that dwarfed the size and destructive power of Fat Boy and Little Man (271). However, neither
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However, as time passed, the true power of the atom was realized. The atom was not only a tool for war, but more importantly, it ultimately became a tool for peace. Scientists soon found that through the use of radioactive materials such as Uranium, vast amounts of electrical energy could be produced. If harnessed properly, nuclear power had the potential to cheaply and safely power the world while minimizing potential wasteful byproducts (Nelson 227). In an effort to develop safe means of nuclear power production, the US created the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1946 with the intent and goal of improving atomic technology (228). The AEC would continue to spend more than 10 years and upwards of five hundred million dollars in an effort to test and design the first nuclear power plant. In that same year, the USSR established the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering, commonly known as the FEI, as a means to compete with the US in the race for clean, safe nuclear power. Through the mass effort of the FEI, Soviet nuclear technology soon proved to be far more advanced than American technology(Perera). On June 1st, 1954, the USSR publicly opened and activated its Atom Mirny-1 reactor, the first nuclear power station with a substantial power output (Nelson 230). This massive reactor belittled and humiliated American nuclear technology, as the US was able to produce only …show more content…
As a result of these needs, machines capable of making rapid calculations became an absolute necessity. To meet this demand, an initially underdeveloped field of technology grew exponentially; electronic computational and communicational technology (Nelson 192). The most pressing and apparent fear during the Cold War that caused continuous tension between the US and the USSR was total nuclear annihilation of both countries at the hands of atomic weaponry. However in the early 1950’s, radar and early detection technology lagged far behind the more developed nuclear technology, leaving the US vulnerable to nuclear attack (Regoli 397). This fear led the US government to devote significant resources to a project known as SAGE, an acronym for Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, in the mid 1950’s. The purpose of SAGE was to create the structure of an air defense system that used a nationwide interconnected computers (397). However, SAGE required a great deal of funding to be fully operational. The push for this extensive funding came in 1957, after the successful launch of the Soviet’s Sputnik 1 satellite. After the American public was shocked by what President Dwight D. Eisenhower described as the “Science gap”, the US government perceived an extreme need for missile defense programs such as SAGE, and further allocated funds to allow for

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