TY  - JOUR
A1  - Prévost-Balga, Antoine
T1  - "Atomic explosion stopped at millionths of a second": media microtemporalities and time synchronisation
T2  - Cinergie
N2  - From 1945 to the early 1960s, the US government undertook numerous atomic and hydrogen bomb tests. These full-scale explosions were recorded on film from various angles, and at different speeds. Indeed, it soon became required to obtain images of the very first milli-seconds of the expanding phase of the atomic fireball. Ultrahigh-speed cameras able to produce such images were specifically developed for that purpose. This article explores the different “media-temporalities” that intersect in those images. I focus on the “micro-processes happening on a technical level that are very fast,” and more specifically the ones that go into the “Rapatronic camera” designed by Harold Edgerton (head of the US national defense contractor company EG&G) to record the atomic fireball early formation. The scientific slow-motion films and high-speed photographic images operate at the junction of the micro-scale temporality of the atomic explosions’ early phases, and the macro-scale temporality of the political and ecological implications of these explosions. I argue that these films are the objects and inscriptions of micro-temporalities, macro-history and geological times.
KW  - High-Speed photography
KW  - Media Temporality
KW  - Micro-Processes
KW  - Synchronization
Y1  - 2020
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/55409
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-554095
SN  - 2280-9481
N1  - This work is licensed under the Creative Commons BY License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
VL  - 9
IS  - 17
SP  - 173
EP  - 182
PB  - Università di Bologna - Dipartimento di Scienze per la Qualità della vita
CY  - Bologna
ER  -