Atom Smasher

We can’t keep everything from the past but generally the first, the last and the biggest are worthy of consideration. The work of Van de Graaff has gone from being cutting edge to a steampunk curiosity, so how much should we keep?

As far as Van de Graaff generators go there’s plenty of small ones, primarily kept for school comedy demonstration purposes but the ones that did the real work got really rather big. Boston Museum of Science has a fabulous air insulated example, 2 storys high it can spit out 2.5 million volts and makes you buzz for the rest of the day. The Science Museum in London has a duplicate tucked away in an old aircraft hanger which if there was any fun in the world would also be up and running because we’d all benefit from it.

Van de Graaff also came up with the Atom Smasher which deserves recognition purely on the strength of its name. It’s appearance lives up to it’s branding, built in 1937 by the Westinghouse Company, it’s 65 ft tall and has that fantastic dated futuristic look. Ticking the social and ethical box, it’s the beginning of nuclear research for the benefit of ordinary people rather than just being a military plaything . It was decommissioned in 1958 and knocked over just a few weeks ago by a real estate developer.

Now it ticked the first, last and biggest box, it’s the direct forerunner to the Hadron Collider and nucleur power is still a massive player so this does n’t represent any kind of alchemy research deadend. How can you possibly justify knocking it off its perch?

Sadly it’s all about profit. If you want to buy land to build something on, choices are available. Green land, brown land that has buildings you could conserve, refurb or even knock down and start again, lots of options, and for a price it’s all out there and you can do the sums and work out your profit.

Some land is cheap because it has got unique stuff on that can’t be destroyed. Your forced to keep it, can’t sell it, so it’s worth nothing, but the liability could be huge. Tricky situation, high risk. One option is to knock it down it down when no else is looking and in the face of society brazen it out.

You can’t make a list of the top five world’s first industrial Atom Smashers, there is only one, it’s the first and it’s a bloody big one, it’s priceless. Which means if you’re in the house building business and not the atom- smashing preservation business you should cross it off your list of things to buy, not mistakenly ‘add to basket’ forgetting you’ve left one-click ordering on. Other options are always available for business but not for preservation.

The first Atom Smasher might be inconvenient, mucking up the real estate layout and of course it’s going to cost to conserve it, and the nuclear connection might put a few people off but hey, that’s why the land was so cheap in the first place.

The bulb survives and the developer will probably, only if legally forced, re mount it on some ugly cradle at the entrance or hidden away, completely undermining its worth. He does n’t care about the objects place in the past or how people will value it in the future, the only thing that matters is his profit in the present. The pursuit of that profit at all costs has taken this priceless, unique Atom Smasher and made it meaningless.

On that sad note I think we all need a buzz of 2.5 million vaults, meet you at an old aircraft hanger near Swindon, we’ve got some work to do.