"The Day Tomorrow Began" program is named for the film of the same name commissioned by Argonne NL on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of CP-1. That film was directed by my stepfather, George W. Tressel. In a nice coincidence, George was a Hutchins Scholar at Chicago (enrolled in 1940 at age 14; earned two degrees (one in physics) by 1945) while Fermi and crew worked on CP-1. He loved to recall the story of how he and his friends used to play squash on the courts under the stadium a couple of times a week. One day he went to play but when he opened the door a soldier holding a rifle blocked his way and demanded to know where he was going. "I am going to play squash," he said. "No you are not," said the soldier. "Why not?" he asked. "There are no squash courts here." "Of course there are, I played here two days ago," replied George. "There are no squash courts here," repeated the soldier while bringing his rifle up to port arms. "Yes, there are," insisted George. "No, there are not," said the soldier as he began to point the business end of the rifle directly at George. George told us he got the message and walked away. Who could have guessed that 25 years later he would be directing and producing the film to commemorate the reason why he couldn't play squash there anymore? He had some amazing stories about the making of the film - one of which was how he obtained the only color film of the Hiroshima explosion. Months had passed since they put out a national call for any photos, drawings or other artifacts from the early atomic age. One day they get a call from the guard desk saying someone is claiming to have color film of the explosion. Well, the crew at first dismissed this claim because one, color film was still new at the time and exceedingly expensive - very few people could afford it. Two, they knew there was no film of the explosion because of a technical problem with the official camera. But then they asked the guard for the name of the person and got back, “something Agnew.” Indeed, it was the Harold Agnew and they fell all over themselves racing to get downstairs. Agnew flew on the support plane, the “Great Artiste.” But unbeknownst to anyone, he smuggled aboard his own personal movie camera. And of course, being one of the heads of the project he had access to color film. Gen. Groves was furious to learn Agnew had taken film without permission and confiscated the film. After much discussion Groves allowed Agnew to have a copy. Somewhere along the way the original was lost but Agnew still had his copy and provided it to George. Another important story about this film: around the 28th minute is the long, steady tilting shot of the mushroom cloud. But how did they take such a steady shot? They didn’t. Remember, this film was taken from a handheld camera on a propeller-driven airplane racing away from the scene. “Steadicam” wouldn’t be invented for decades yet; Agnew’s footage was shakier than the Blair Witch Project. All the way back to his days at experimental TV station WBKB (Chicago) George was inventing cutting-edge camera and production equipment. To create that modern Hollywood “Steadicam” shot George invented and built the equipment to manually adjust the position of the film frame-by-frame and re-photograph it into what you see now. Sadly, George passed away at his home in Silver Spring, MD, at the age of 93 on November 17, 2019. George had many, many other accomplishments that have touched untold millions of people’s lives such as creating the very first “news ticker/crawl” for television and being the driving force in bringing closed-captioning to TV and film for the hearing impaired. Keep it going, Chicago!
@belafilaszlo1291
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Almost impossible to tell this story without Leo Silard, but the University of Chicago succeded. Leo - invented chain reaction - wrote the actual letter to Rooselevelt (Einstein only signed it) - solved how can graphite used in the reactor (the biggest reason the naci’s failed, as they cannot solve this issue) - invented the cooling system used in nuclear reactors till today - made various reactor designs after the first one - biggest protester not to use the bomb after naci Germany fall (also organised the first peace conference between soviets, and US scientists during the cold war)
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