The Scottish physicist James Maxwell, who in otl was the closest anyone ever got to coming up with the theory of relativity before Einstein, lives a few years longer and completes his theory of relativity. Using this as a base, scientists are able to create an atomic bomb in 1905. Which country makes the bomb? Is it used, and where and when? Does it affect WWI?
Atomic bomb created in 1905
- Thread starter Kaiser Ladon Vonrichenhau
- Start date
I don't think the theory of relativity would be enough to get a bomb, but...
...I don't know. The only way it could be used until the advent of modern bombers is a truck/boat bomb or as a land mine sort of thing. I can see the countries of Europe sneaking bombs into each other's major cities and waiting in case a war breaks out.
Or using submarines/"Neutral" ships to sneak it into an enemy harbor and detonate. As a landmine weapon it'd need the front lines to be more mobile than in WWI at least. If the French were to place a bomb and then allow the Germans to overrun them, it'd compromise too much of the line to be as effective as they like. And the main concentration of soldiers would be at the front itself, so any bomb likely to blow them up would also likely destroy their own forces. They could tunnel under the enemy, set a bomb, and set it off underground, but again, that'd be close to their own lines and this was tried with conventional explosives with little success.
I guess the most useful thing would be if they could miniaturize the bomb enough to fit into one of the supercannons they were building by WWI. Or they could just build a gun big enough to launch them I suppose. If they did that, WWI would be a LOT nastier and possibly shorter.
...I don't know. The only way it could be used until the advent of modern bombers is a truck/boat bomb or as a land mine sort of thing. I can see the countries of Europe sneaking bombs into each other's major cities and waiting in case a war breaks out.
Or using submarines/"Neutral" ships to sneak it into an enemy harbor and detonate. As a landmine weapon it'd need the front lines to be more mobile than in WWI at least. If the French were to place a bomb and then allow the Germans to overrun them, it'd compromise too much of the line to be as effective as they like. And the main concentration of soldiers would be at the front itself, so any bomb likely to blow them up would also likely destroy their own forces. They could tunnel under the enemy, set a bomb, and set it off underground, but again, that'd be close to their own lines and this was tried with conventional explosives with little success.
I guess the most useful thing would be if they could miniaturize the bomb enough to fit into one of the supercannons they were building by WWI. Or they could just build a gun big enough to launch them I suppose. If they did that, WWI would be a LOT nastier and possibly shorter.
Well, the first American Nuclear Artillery test was in '53, 13 years after the first bomb. Keeping that time scale (Maybe a bit more because of primitiveness of the earlier equipment, may be a bit less because they need a delivery method and put more money into it) the first nuclear artillery shell should come online about OTL's end of the war. But again, depending on how the war goes and development, it'd vary.
Special relativity != Nuclear technology
A nuclear weapon requires at the very least an understanding of nuclear chain reactions, something that wasn't achieved in OTL until the mid-1930s. The earliest I can imagine a nuclear weapons program starting is maybe 1930-ish, but that would presume a resource-rich, but desperate power needing it. Even then, it would still need a massive amount of uranium ore (the USA got a huge shipment from the Congo), and a high-power electric grid to power the enrichment facilities.
It seems logical in retrospect to think nations would want nuclear weapons, but before 1945 only a few people would have considered them remotely practical...
Simon
A nuclear weapon requires at the very least an understanding of nuclear chain reactions, something that wasn't achieved in OTL until the mid-1930s. The earliest I can imagine a nuclear weapons program starting is maybe 1930-ish, but that would presume a resource-rich, but desperate power needing it. Even then, it would still need a massive amount of uranium ore (the USA got a huge shipment from the Congo), and a high-power electric grid to power the enrichment facilities.
It seems logical in retrospect to think nations would want nuclear weapons, but before 1945 only a few people would have considered them remotely practical...
Simon
David S Poepoe
Banned
You are right. Maxwell is a good start, but I think Rutherford is a better candidate.
Atomic weapons need a lot of infrastructure and materials not readily available in 1905.
I would think there would be three possible candidates: 1 Great Britain 2 France 3 Germany. For each of these there would need to be a compelling reason to develop such a weapon. Germany in 1905 was still developing its conventional forces particularly the navy so where would the investment capital come from? Britain needed a navy not a super weapon so why would they develop such a device? France maybe but their contribution to atomic science peaked with Curie and then petetred out so that they were not an important contributer even by 1905.
In any event none of these candidates had neither the necessary infrastructure to build such a weapon nor the political will. If they did not then no one else did either.
I would think there would be three possible candidates: 1 Great Britain 2 France 3 Germany. For each of these there would need to be a compelling reason to develop such a weapon. Germany in 1905 was still developing its conventional forces particularly the navy so where would the investment capital come from? Britain needed a navy not a super weapon so why would they develop such a device? France maybe but their contribution to atomic science peaked with Curie and then petetred out so that they were not an important contributer even by 1905.
In any event none of these candidates had neither the necessary infrastructure to build such a weapon nor the political will. If they did not then no one else did either.
I'm going to handwave something and imagine that someone makes a theoretical breakthrough on an Einsteinian level and the idea of nuclear fission becomes known in 1905.
What now? Well, you need to convince a country (for at this point in history, only a nation has the resources needed) that a bomb is possible and that one should be developed. Out of all the Great Powers, Germany has the need for an equalizing force against Great Britain, France, and Russia. It is superior to the rest in chemical and materials technology. It has a capable education system that can produce the engineers, physicists, chemists, and other scientific specialties needed. It has the ability to spend vast amounts of money on a single project thanks to its relatively authoritarian structure. That's the good news.
But you have massive difficulties involved. In 1905, scientists haven't even discovered the idea of isotopes, for Christ's sake! You'll need massive investment to even make a bomb possible on a technical level before you can even begin work on the tools to build the bomb itself. You don't even have the tools to identify the problem, let alone the tools to build the tools to get the uranium or plutonium to build a bomb.
And uranium enrichment -- forget about it. Even if scientists knew that there were different isotopes in 1905, there's no way to reach the uranium purity needed. Gaseous diffusion won't work because you don't have the special filters needed to remove the heavier isotope. Electromagnetic diffusion can't reach the quality needed. Centrifugal diffusion is technically possible, but laser diffusion, cryogenic diffusion and chemical diffusion are all out.
In the end, your best choice would be to focus on plutonium enrichment. But the cost, my God! To jump generations of technology, the cost goes up exponentially unless you're willing to spend decades on the project. In OTL, the Manhattan Project was by far the single largest engineering project of the war, roughly equivalent to the construction of America's entire fleet of strategic bombers. Imagine what it would cost in 1905, even ignoring uranium bomb enrichment! It'd be like building the Great Wall of China.
Given the resources available, it's utterly impossible. You're simply starting from too low a base and there are too many questions to answer. Let's say you somehow got William II to buy into this insane "bomb" idea. He'd have to cancel the German dreadnought program and pour every bit of money that was spent in OTL on those ships into this program and more billions besides. It would be a national undertaking, impossible to keep secret. Even if William somehow managed to keep a firm hand on the project, the country would fall to pieces under the burden.
What now? Well, you need to convince a country (for at this point in history, only a nation has the resources needed) that a bomb is possible and that one should be developed. Out of all the Great Powers, Germany has the need for an equalizing force against Great Britain, France, and Russia. It is superior to the rest in chemical and materials technology. It has a capable education system that can produce the engineers, physicists, chemists, and other scientific specialties needed. It has the ability to spend vast amounts of money on a single project thanks to its relatively authoritarian structure. That's the good news.
But you have massive difficulties involved. In 1905, scientists haven't even discovered the idea of isotopes, for Christ's sake! You'll need massive investment to even make a bomb possible on a technical level before you can even begin work on the tools to build the bomb itself. You don't even have the tools to identify the problem, let alone the tools to build the tools to get the uranium or plutonium to build a bomb.
And uranium enrichment -- forget about it. Even if scientists knew that there were different isotopes in 1905, there's no way to reach the uranium purity needed. Gaseous diffusion won't work because you don't have the special filters needed to remove the heavier isotope. Electromagnetic diffusion can't reach the quality needed. Centrifugal diffusion is technically possible, but laser diffusion, cryogenic diffusion and chemical diffusion are all out.
In the end, your best choice would be to focus on plutonium enrichment. But the cost, my God! To jump generations of technology, the cost goes up exponentially unless you're willing to spend decades on the project. In OTL, the Manhattan Project was by far the single largest engineering project of the war, roughly equivalent to the construction of America's entire fleet of strategic bombers. Imagine what it would cost in 1905, even ignoring uranium bomb enrichment! It'd be like building the Great Wall of China.
Given the resources available, it's utterly impossible. You're simply starting from too low a base and there are too many questions to answer. Let's say you somehow got William II to buy into this insane "bomb" idea. He'd have to cancel the German dreadnought program and pour every bit of money that was spent in OTL on those ships into this program and more billions besides. It would be a national undertaking, impossible to keep secret. Even if William somehow managed to keep a firm hand on the project, the country would fall to pieces under the burden.
Even though this really is ASB, I would confidently put my money on Germany to build a bomb first. At the start of the 20th century, Germany was the scientific Mecca of the world. Germany was also the only nation which linked its research institutes directly to industry.
Germany's technological superiority over Britain, France, and the USA at this time would have made her the only nation in the world with the capability of developing an atomic bomb.
Germany's technological superiority over Britain, France, and the USA at this time would have made her the only nation in the world with the capability of developing an atomic bomb.
Forget it. While the theoretical basis might possibly have been laid out decades earlier than in OTL, there's the problem of how to get enough fissionable uranium to do that. That involved at the time of the Manhattan Project-and still involves-separation of isotopes through the use of gaseous uranium hexafluoride. To make UF6, industrial quantities of elemental fluorine--a viciously reactive, corrosive, and poisonous gas--are needed. Such quantities weren't available in OTL until Du Pont made the process workable in the early 1940s; that process involves electrolysis of KFHF, or potassium hydrogen fluoride.
In 1905, there was not in place the expertise in dealing with elemental fluorine necessary to make it in anything more than laboratory quantities: indeed, it wasn't until the Manhattan Project that anyone developed a practical fluorine compresser. The electric infrastructure might have supported it (given, for example, the sizable streetcar systems of the day), but chemical engineering wasn't as nearly far along as would be necessary. And the number of deaths attributable to handling elemental fluorine would have been ghastly given the industrial safety technology of the time.
Oh, one other thing: at the time, uranium had little in the way of industrial applications. Pitchblende ore was at most a minor byproduct of mining. You're talking about wholescale prospecting, establishment of mines, building railroads sufficient to move the massive quantities of ore available, etc.--and while you're at it, you'd need to jump the fluorspar extractive industries an order of magnitude if not more to yield the raw material to yield fluorine.
In 1905, there was not in place the expertise in dealing with elemental fluorine necessary to make it in anything more than laboratory quantities: indeed, it wasn't until the Manhattan Project that anyone developed a practical fluorine compresser. The electric infrastructure might have supported it (given, for example, the sizable streetcar systems of the day), but chemical engineering wasn't as nearly far along as would be necessary. And the number of deaths attributable to handling elemental fluorine would have been ghastly given the industrial safety technology of the time.
Oh, one other thing: at the time, uranium had little in the way of industrial applications. Pitchblende ore was at most a minor byproduct of mining. You're talking about wholescale prospecting, establishment of mines, building railroads sufficient to move the massive quantities of ore available, etc.--and while you're at it, you'd need to jump the fluorspar extractive industries an order of magnitude if not more to yield the raw material to yield fluorine.
Also, the Manhattan Project required a massive effort in the richest nation on earth, pooling the combined talents of scientists from all over the world...and in the context of a global war against a particularly nasty foe in which the allies' very survival was believed to be at stake.
Even granting that the theoretical physics and basic engineering could be figured out, is there any one nation in 1905 which would have seen the value in developing fission explosives? In peacetime? With so much already invested in dreadoughts and artillery?
Nonetheless, if it happened, I would not automatically vote for Germany or any other European nation...nor is there any reason the isolationist USA in 1905 would spend this effort. Assuming the basic research exists by 1905 to demonstrate at least the theoretical possibility of atomic weapons, I might imagine the nations most interested in spending the time and effort to develop them would second tier powers (Italy, Japan, perhaps even the Ottoman Empire or China). Nations with at least a crust of sophisticated western science/technology together the most to gain by completely upsetting the balance of power.
Wouldn't it be a hoot if a non-western power was the first to develop nukes?
(Excerpt from the London Times, June 5, 1911)
Mysterious Blast Levels German Naval Base in China (Reuters)
Reports coming to our correspondents in Shanghai provide more evidence that the German naval base in Tsingtao was indeed completely destroyed by a huge explosion last Monday. The extent of the devastation is apparently such that no first hand accounts exist, but apparently the desctruction is total within at least 2miles of the city, killing perhaps all of the German residents as well as millions of Chinese. There are also rumors of a strange epidemic spreading among the survivors. Although a Chinese nationalist movement calling itself "The Golden Hand of Furious Retribution" has somehow claimed responsibility, Dr Alphonse Genovase of the Royal Institute of Geology would like to assure our readers that such an explosion could not have been man made, and certainly not by people as primitive as the Chinese. Dr Genovase believes this awe-inspiring cataclysm must have been caused by a volcanic eruption, or perhaps even a comet falling from the heavens on the Kaiser's men and the innocent Chinese peasants. He cautions us to question the claims by some American astronomers that Martians..."
Even granting that the theoretical physics and basic engineering could be figured out, is there any one nation in 1905 which would have seen the value in developing fission explosives? In peacetime? With so much already invested in dreadoughts and artillery?
Nonetheless, if it happened, I would not automatically vote for Germany or any other European nation...nor is there any reason the isolationist USA in 1905 would spend this effort. Assuming the basic research exists by 1905 to demonstrate at least the theoretical possibility of atomic weapons, I might imagine the nations most interested in spending the time and effort to develop them would second tier powers (Italy, Japan, perhaps even the Ottoman Empire or China). Nations with at least a crust of sophisticated western science/technology together the most to gain by completely upsetting the balance of power.
Wouldn't it be a hoot if a non-western power was the first to develop nukes?
(Excerpt from the London Times, June 5, 1911)
Mysterious Blast Levels German Naval Base in China (Reuters)
Reports coming to our correspondents in Shanghai provide more evidence that the German naval base in Tsingtao was indeed completely destroyed by a huge explosion last Monday. The extent of the devastation is apparently such that no first hand accounts exist, but apparently the desctruction is total within at least 2miles of the city, killing perhaps all of the German residents as well as millions of Chinese. There are also rumors of a strange epidemic spreading among the survivors. Although a Chinese nationalist movement calling itself "The Golden Hand of Furious Retribution" has somehow claimed responsibility, Dr Alphonse Genovase of the Royal Institute of Geology would like to assure our readers that such an explosion could not have been man made, and certainly not by people as primitive as the Chinese. Dr Genovase believes this awe-inspiring cataclysm must have been caused by a volcanic eruption, or perhaps even a comet falling from the heavens on the Kaiser's men and the innocent Chinese peasants. He cautions us to question the claims by some American astronomers that Martians..."
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Edwardians with unlimited budget (and a disturbing lack of concern for dead workers) might be able to build a gun-type weapon, using U-233 bred and chemically separated from ordinary thorium...
one problem with atomic artillery was that the crew was within the danger area when the shell went off... another was that they were so damm big and hard to move that the Soviets knew where every Atomic Annie was at all times and likely had a stick of bombers ready to pounce on each.
It'd be impossible to make atomic artillery at that time without railroad guns... and eventually someone's gonna get the bright idea to strap a few bombs to a plane and go after them
It'd be impossible to make atomic artillery at that time without railroad guns... and eventually someone's gonna get the bright idea to strap a few bombs to a plane and go after them
Two words: Suicide zepplins.
You're sure as hell not going to outrun the effects of the bomb in a zepplin.
David S Poepoe
Banned
I remember it. I think I borrowed the copy from my university library. I believe that there were two to three bombs built and detonated in the story.
Regarding zeppelins, in Moorcock's Warlord of the Air and the Steel Tsar both have atomic bombs that are delivered via airship.