Institute of Contemporary History

The study „Looking Out for the Atomic Age I: Popularization of Nuclear Energy and Power Engineering in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s” deals with period ideas or images of nuclear energy and power engineering. At the same time, the images are set in the context of popularization of nuclear energy in Czechoslovakia in the second half of the 1950s. The first part of the book, titled „The creation of the Atomic Age”, concentrates on the popularization of nuclear energy in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s, i.e. examines the context in which articles and books on nuclear energy and power engineering were produced. It also deals with authors writing about nuclear energy and printed media on the pages of which Czechoslovak readers could get acquainted with nuclear energy and power engineering, or their images, as well as publishing houses producing popularization literature on the topic. The chapter also introduced two Czechoslovak press campaigns which took place in the mid-1950s – the commissioning of the first Soviet nuclear power plant in Obninsk in 1954, and the Soviet Union’s offer to help Czechoslovakia and other people’s democracies with their peace nuclear programs in the beginning of 1955. The second part of the book, “A guide through the Atomic Age”, examines some concepts and ideas of the future Atomic Age, from period ideological interpretations of this awaited era to concrete descriptions of future achievements, whether means of transport or thermonuclear power plants. The third chapter, „The leaving of the Atomic Age”, shows how images of nuclear energy and power engineering have been changing since the 1960s and how the life stories of those who created the nuclear energy images in the 1950s were developing.

ŠMIDRKALOVÁ, Michaela. Vyhlížení atomového věku. Popularizace jaderné energie a energetiky v Československu v padesátých letech 20. století. Praha: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v. v. i., 2019. 128 s. Sešity Ústavu pro soudobé dějiny, sv. 53. ISBN 978-80-7285-236-9.