Wells Named the Atomic Bomb

The story as it is told

In 1914 H. G. Wells published a novel about a weapon that could flatten cities: the atomic bomb. It was science fiction. Then a scientist read it.

The scientist took the idea, the internet version goes, and built the bomb. Science fiction became reality.

What we can confirm

The World Set Free came out in 1914, on the eve of the First World War. Historian Alex Wellerstein calls it the first instance of the idea of "atomic bombs," explosive weapons powered by atomic energy. Wells's bombs are nothing like real fission weapons. They are lumps of an invented element, Carolinum, that keep exploding for days after being dropped from aeroplanes and leave battlefields "sprinkled with radiant matter." Wells drew his atomic-energy ideas from the chemist Frederick Soddy's popular lectures. Wellerstein argues the jump to a weapon was Wells's own. In the novel, the breakthrough in releasing atomic energy is made by a scientist called Holsten "so soon as the year 1933."

Leo Szilard read the book in Berlin in 1932. In recollections published in Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts (MIT Press, 1978), quoted by Wellerstein, he says it "made a very great impression on me, but I didn't regard it as anything but fiction." The UCSD finding aid for Szilard's papers records the same reading.

In September 1933, now a refugee in London, Szilard read a Times report of a speech in which Ernest Rutherford called talk of atomic power on an industrial scale "moonshine." Szilard says he was waiting at a red light at Southampton Row when it occurred to him that an element which released two neutrons for every one it absorbed could sustain a chain reaction. The American Nuclear Society's anniversary piece dates the walk to Sept 12, 1933, at the corner of Russell Square and Southampton Row. He filed a patent application on March 12, 1934 (ANS). By his own account he wanted it kept secret: "I knew it because I had read H. G. Wells" (via Wellerstein).

Wellerstein draws the line carefully. He notes that Szilard's neutron chain reaction owes nothing to Carolinum, but Wells shaped how Szilard thought about what such a weapon would mean. The ANS piece goes further and says Szilard "did not credit it as any part of his inspiration." The two accounts can be reconciled if Wells supplied the stakes while the physics came from Szilard. When fission was discovered in late 1938, Szilard recalled, "All the things which H. G. Wells predicted appeared suddenly real to me."

The idea worked the first time it was tried, on Dec 2, 1942, in Chicago (ANS). The patent for that reactor, US 2,708,656 "Neutronic reactor," names Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard as inventors. It was filed Dec 19, 1944 and not issued until May 17, 1955 (Google Patents).

The facts

• The World Set Free (1914) uses the phrase "atomic bombs," with Carolinum, a 17-day "half period," and bombs dropped from aeroplanes. Wellerstein calls it the first instance of the concept and traces Wells's ideas to Soddy's The Interpretation of Radium (1909). Alex Wellerstein, "Strange even to the men who used them," Doomsday Machines, Apr 17, 2026, doomsdaymachines.net
• Szilard read it in 1932; quotes on "very great impression," the Rutherford "moonshine" report, the Southampton Row red light, the spring 1934 patent, and "I knew it because I had read H. G. Wells." Wellerstein cites Weart and Szilard, eds., His Version of the Facts (MIT, 1978), 16-18 and 53. Same.
• The Sept 12, 1933 date, Russell Square and Southampton Row, the Mar 12, 1934 patent application, the first working chain reaction on Dec 2, 1942, and the Wells line "so soon as the year 1933." Szilard "did not credit it as any part of his inspiration." Rod Adams, ANS Nuclear Newswire, Sep 17, 2013, ans.org
• US 2,708,656 "Neutronic reactor," inventors Fermi and Szilard, filed 1944-12-19, issued 1955-05-17. Google Patents, patents.google.com
• Szilard read The World Set Free (London, 1914) in 1932 and it made a great impression. UC San Diego Library, Register of Leo Szilard Papers (MSS 32), libraries.ucsd.edu
• Szilard sent extracts of the novel to an industrialist, writing that "all this is moonshine" but that the forecast of the writers may prove more accurate than that of the scientists. Peter D. Smith, "Faust, the Physicists and the Atomic," PEGS 77:2 (2008), peterdsmith.com
• The Times report of Rutherford's 1933 remarks. BMJ 1989;298:941, doi:10.1136/bmj.298.6678.941

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