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Ten minutes before the scheduled detonation, a green signal rocket was fired into the air

and a siren sounded at base camp, heard by the men on the mountain some seconds later.

They'd been told not to look directly at the blast for fear of being blinded.

They were to turn their backs and welders' goggles had been offered to protect their eyesight.

Now, though, as the test shot became imminent, the urge to see was overwhelming,

and people made sudden last-minute decisions not to wear their goggles,

or to get out of their cars and brave the ultraviolet radiation. A second rocket fired,

and then another blast of the siren, lonely and mournful. Five minutes to go and men who were

used to calculating in nanoseconds were gripped by a stomach churning combination of anxiety

and excitement. Would it work? Five minutes seemed endless, then a final rocket to mark a

minute's countdown. One physicist started to cover his face with thick suntan lotion and put on

heavy gloves to protect his hands from the flash. A shortwave radio squawked into life, and they

heard the last seconds of the countdown. Almost 20 miles away, a bright flash appeared

and grew filling the dark pre-dawn with a penetrating daylight, like the sun at high noon.

A strange globe rose in the sky. Klaus Fuchs later remembered that it seemed alien and magnificent,

with weird flashes of blue and green pulsating

on its surface. Then it expanded and was eclipsed by a huge shockwave. Then they heard the blast,

like the crack of a gun, then duller thunder as echoes crossed the desert and rebounded from the

hills to the east. Everyone was shocked into silence by the site. It had worked.

As they looked up at the giant cloud that rose into the sky, it dawned on them that it was over

...