The dangers of shockwaves and radiation required the camera to be placed 7 miles from the detonation site on a tower some 75 feet in the air. Exposure time was one-hundred-millionth of a second. The exposure time was so small that no conventional mechanical shutter could be used. A magnetic field was created around two polarized lenses that were rotated, permitting light to pass through an optical system.
- Shannon Thomas Perich, associate curator of the Photographic History Collection at the Smithsonian, on the special camera created to photograph atomic bomb tests in the 1950s.
