In the first half of the twentieth century, the energy potential locked away in the atom was increasingly seen as a method of producing a limitless and transformational form of energy. By the 1930s, scientists had been able to split atoms (nuclear fission) to release vast quantities of energy — by the early 1940s, the first chain reaction had been achieved.
With the Second World War already underway, the idea that atomic energy would end up providing power for everything quickly transformed into efforts to weaponise this new technology. In July 1945, a test in New Mexico demonstrated the fearsome destructive capacity of the nuclear bomb and just a few weeks later, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan helped to hasten the end of the Second World War.
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