Diagram Illustrating Principle of Atomic Bomb

Lantern slides believed to have been used by Prof. John S. Thompson to teach nuclear physics at Illinois Institute of Technology prior to 1951. Most of these slides were commercially-produced, though some were assembled in Chicago and perhaps produced specifically for Thompson's classes, bearing images and graphs he had located in various published works. The slides mainly document the effects, both on buildings and humans, of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945; they are a mix of photographic evidence and charts/graphs detailing some of the physics involved in atomic weaponry and the physical effects of their detonation. The slides are are described at the item level.