Ever wondered what an atomic blast looks like before it obliterates everything around it? Before the smoke, the mushroom cloud, the devastation, it's really quite amazing to see the first few fractions of an atomic bomb upon detonation.

Edgerton built a special lens 10 feet long for his camera which was set up in a bunker 7 miles from the source of the blast which was triggered Nevada - the bomb placed atop a steel gantry anchored to the desert floor by guide wires. The exposures are at 1/100,000,000ths of a second...