Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

In the closing years of the 19th century, scientists began recording strange phenomena, mysterious glowing gas and smudges on photographic plates.

These findings triggered a process of scientific discovery in the field of nuclear physics

that would ultimately lead to unprecedented devastation at the end of the Second World War.

Frank Close, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Exeter College, Oxford,

spoke to Matt Elton about how a combination of people and politics shaped the nuclear age.

Before we get into the more familiar aspects of this story, I wanted to start by exploring something you say towards the start of your book, which is that it's little appreciated that

there were three industrial revolutions. Could you tell us what are these three industrial

revolutions? Well, the first industrial revolution involved steam power. The second industrial revolution was what I

called the electromagnetic one. By that stage, the mid to late 19th century, the idea that matter was

made of atoms was now well established. The idea was that

atoms are permanent and unchanging, like the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water as they turned

into steam. They were the basic bricks of everything that is matter, but the cement that held

those bricks together were the electric

and magnetic forces. And it was the understanding of electricity and magnetism by Michael Faraday

in the mid-19th century that began what I called the electrical revolution, the dynamo and

everything that flowed from that. The third revolution, which is the

one that my book is about, is what I call the atomic or nuclear revolution. The discovery

at the end of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th century, that the atoms have a deep

inner structure, which we call the atomic nucleus, that there's a vast amount of energy

locked in there. And the question was, how could we get it and turn it into use? And that was

the third nuclear revolution, if you like.

...