the quick and the dead.

The NBC news and special events department present the spectacular document for

ear on the atomic bomb under the direction of Fred Friendly.

This is Bob Hope. You see this piece of white shiny metal about the size of, say, a package of cigarettes?

You see this piece in my other hand, about the same size? Together they weigh a few pounds. Both are hunks of uranium. Now I take one

and gently I tap it against the other. Now hold on to your seats. That's an atomic

explosion. Just like the one that blew up Hiroshima.

Two pieces of ore and you bang them together and you can destroy a city. Why? What has

man done to these two pieces of metal?

Now you're probably leaning back and saying to yourself,

what on earth is hope doing, talking about atomic energy?

What does he know about physics and you'd be right?

I didn't even know what Fission meant.

Don't let that last word scare you.

Fission is simply atom language for explosive

or that an atom is so small that there are over a billion of them in every drop of water.

That is until three weeks ago.

I happened to look at my income tax form and I realized that I was a very big taxpayer

and I knew that an awful big part of that tax was going toward atomic energy plants,

of which I knew less than nothing.

So one day I figured as long as I'm financing this project, I ought to kind of check up on things.

So when I was in New York, I was sitting around chatting with some of the boys in the newsroom and

...