"# When you wish upon a star #" "# Makes no difference who you are #" "Each week, as you enter this timeless land, one of these many worlds will open to you." "Tall tales and true from the legendary past." "Promise of things to come." "The wonderworld of nature's own realm." "The happiest kingdom of them all." "Presenting this week..." "Many years ago, a prophetic writer and engineer told of the genius of one man who discovered the very power of the universe and harnessed it to propel his ship" "20,000 leagues under the sea." "But the hero of that story was afraid to let this power fall into the hands of an immature mankind." "And so he chose, rather, to destroy his own work." "Yet, there is hope." "In God's good time, nature's own energies will come to humankind for a better and a richer life." "Fiction often has a way of becoming fact." "Not long ago, we brought you the immortal tale "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,"" "featuring the famous submarine Nautilus." "According to the story, this craft was powered by a magic force." "Today that tale has come true." "This is a model of the real Nautilus, the world's first atom-powered ship." "It's the first example of the useful power of the atom that will drive the machines of our Atomic Age." "The atom is our future." "It is a subject everyone wants to understand." "So we felt it was a most important topic for a Tomorrowland program." "In fact, we considered it so important that we embarked on several atomic projects." "For one, we've made plans to build an exhibit at Disneyland that will show you atomic energy in action." "Now, our atomic projects here at the studio are twofold." "We prepared this program and also a book so that we could tell you this important story in full detail." "Both grew together." "We gave them the same title." "And many of the illustrations appear in both." "As you can see, we found ourselves deep in the field of nuclear physics." "Of course, we don't pretend to be scientists." "We're storytellers." "So we combined the tools of our trade with the knowledge of experts." "We added a nationally known scientist to our staff to head our new science department." "His first assignment was to write the book on the atom and to help us in developing this program." "Here to tell you the story of "Our Friend the Atom"" "is the author of our book, Dr. Heinz Haber." "As we developed our story of the atom, we made an amazing discovery." "We had a science story." "But suddenly we realized that it was almost like a fairy tale." "By a strange coincidence, our story turned out to be like the old fable from "The Arabian Nights," "The Fisherman and the Genie."" "This tale tells of an age-old wish of man." "A wish to be the master of a mighty genie that does his bidding." "There was once an old fisherman who lived in great poverty." "One day, after casting his net many times, he happened to pull ashore a brazen vessel." "Its mouth was closed with a lead stopper." "Marveling at his strange catch, the fisherman said..." "I'll wager that whatever is sealed so well must contain something of great value." "Know that presently thou wilt have to die!" "Heaven forbid!" "Or at least tell me why." "As I lay imprisoned in that tiny jar for many centuries, my anger grew and grew until I swore in my heart that my liberator should perish!" "What a cruel trick fate hath dealt me." "Trick?" "Hmm." "Oh, genie?" "Since thou art determined upon my death, grant me this one last question." "Well?" "How can one as mighty and powerful as thou dwell in so tiny a vessel?" "What?" "Thou dost not believe me?" "Not till I have seen it done can I believe it." "Watch, then." "Now you shall return to the sea!" "Nay!" "Nay!" "I did not mean what I said!" "Aah!" "No!" "No!" "Release me, and I give my solemn vow to grant thee three wishes." "Strangely enough, our story is like that fable, come true through science." "We are like the fisherman." "For centuries, we have been casting our net into the sea of the great unknown in search of knowledge." "And finally, we found a vessel." "And like the one in the fable, it contains a genie." "A genie hidden in the atoms of this metal, uranium." "Let me show you." "This is a Geiger counter." "It tells us that the genie is here, imprisoned in these atoms." "So this is our story." "How the vessel was discovered, how the genie was liberated, how he first threatened to kill, and how he was finally harnessed to grant us three wishes." "Our story begins in ancient Greece in 400 BC." "At that time, man firmly believed that all things were composed of four basic elements." "Earth, air, water, and fire." "But Democritus, a philosopher of that era, thought that these elements could be divided into smaller particles." "In fact, he even gave them their name, atomos, which means "indivisible."" "I crumble this Earth to soil and, in turn, crumble this soil to dust." "Now, if I could reduce this dust into its smallest particles, these would be atoms." "This beach appears to be a solid carpet." "But on closer inspection, we see that it is made of millions of grains of sand." "If we think of grains of sand as atoms and pack them together, they can be molded into any desired form." "So it is in this way nature uses these tiny particles, these atoms, to build all things." "The Earth, water, air, and fire." "If air and fire consist of small particles, how can they rise?" "They would fall to the Earth like a shower of pebbles." "The man who disagreed with Democritus was Aristotle, a famous Greek philosopher." "His philosophies shaped the thinking of man for the next 2,000 years." "And so the idea of the atom was lost." "In the 17 th century, man went beyond mere thinking." "He began to act." "His philosophy became "seeing is believing."" "He invented the telescope, and this magic instrument greatly extended his range of sight." "He saw mountains and craters on the face of the moon." "He found that the planet Venus also showed phases, just like our moon." "And that Jupiter has moons of its own." "He saw for the first time the reddish disk of Mars." "And the beautiful rings of Saturn." "With a telescope, man discovered the universe in all its unbelievable richness." "At about the same time, a second powerful instrument was invented." "The microscope." "It opened up an entirely new and tiny world for man to explore." "It was a world full of strange patterns and designs." "Man found them in ordinary things such as wood." "In the feathers of birds." "In the bodies of insects." "And in the scales of fish." "The microscope revealed infinite details in everything." "There was hidden beauty in miniature seashells, so tiny that millions of them form only a wisp of powder." "Even a single drop of pond water revealed forms of life never before seen." "Tiny one-celled animals and plants." "The microscope gave man his first look into nature's miniature universe, a world teeming with fantastic forms of life." "With a microscope, man also discovered the beautiful and regular forms of crystals." "He marveled at the delicate shapes of snowflakes." "In thousands, no two are alike." "In the regular shapes of crystals lay hidden the secret of the atom's existence." "Of course, the microscope doesn't show atoms." "They are much too small for that." "But it made man aware that everything he saw and discovered must be composed of something still smaller." "One of the first men to explore nature's tiny realm was John Dalton, an English chemist." "This was early in the 19th century." "It was he who revived the idea of the atom." "D AL TON:" "I believe Democritus was right." "All things are made of atoms." "Take copper, for instance." "My drawings show how the atoms group together." "They are like little, hard, indestructible balls with some unknown force acting between them." "When the atoms pack together, layer upon layer, millions upon millions, then they build a tiny crystal." "And when the crystals combine, they form a copper metal we are so familiar with." "And there are also atoms for silver and gold." "There are different kinds of atoms everywhere." "Atoms for sulfur in a match." "Atoms for carbon in every ordinary pencil." "Atoms for mercury in a thermometer." "A different kind of atom for each element." "But most of nature's creations are mixtures." "This glass is a mixture of different kinds of atoms." "The wood here, another." "This book is composed of more mixtures than I could name." "The secret of how nature creates her mixtures was first understood in 1811 through the work of Amadeo Avogadro of Italy." "A VO G ADRO:" "When atoms of different elements combine, they form into small, compact masses, which I call molecules." "I have found that there is a different proportion of atoms for each kind of molecule." "For example, when one atom of o xygen combines with two atoms of hydrogen, they form the most common molecule in nature." "This, of course, is H20." "Water." "It takes billions and billions of these water molecules to make a single drop of water." "They are so tiny that they cannot be seen, even through the most powerful microscope." "However, the microscope does reveal an important fact about atoms and molecules." "It shows that they are in constant motion." "These are dust particles in a drop of water." "And you can see they are being kicked around by the ever-busy water molecules." "It was over 100 years ago that an early microscope first revealed that atoms and molecules are constantly on the move." "Now, in a flame, for example, the motion of the atoms and molecules is extremely violent." "And this is why a flame is hot." "Our skin is equipped with tiny organs that can feel this violent movement as heat or even pain." "Now, in this glass, the molecules are moving much more slowly." "And so it feels normal to the touch." "Even in an ice cube, the molecules are moving, but very slowly." "And this is why the ice feels cold." "Let's look at heat with an atomic eye, so to speak." "Atoms, of course, don't burn up." "They merely rearrange themselves, forming molecules of soot and ashes." "So that you can see what is going on, we will exaggerate the size of the atoms over a billion times." "The molecules in the flame dash around with great speed and bounce against the molecules of the glass." "They transfer their violent motion to the glass and finally to the ice." "It's like a pool game with the balls bouncing against each other." "If more heat is applied, the ice molecules will move faster and faster and finally break loose from each other." "The ice melts." "As the movement becomes more violent, the water begins to boil." "The molecules are kicked away from the surface as steam." "In hot steam, they're dashing around with great force." "Enough force to bounce the lid of the jar." "There is power in steam." "Power that can do more than just lift the lid." "When this force was put to use, it ushered in the Mechanical Age." "It was the power of steam that turned our generators to produce electric power." "And the Gaslight Era then became the Age of Electricity." "True, steam was a mighty servant." "But it was a hungry servant." "It had to be fed constantly." "And satisfying its hunger cut deep into our precious resources of coal and oil." "Man had not yet found the genie of our story." "In fact, he hadn't even found the vessel in which the genie was imprisoned." "The year was 1896." "Again, in search of knowledge, the net was cast into the sea of the unknown." "And, like in our fable, a catch was made." "An accidental catch." "The discovery was made by Henri Becquerel, a French scientist." "BE C Q UEREL:" "Today, I discovered something very strange." "I happened to leave a piece of uranium on a wrapped photographic plate in a dark drawer." "When I developed the plate, I found that it was fogged." "Apparently, the uranium had exposed it even in the darkness and through the wrapping." "This uranium, it seems to possess some mysterious activity and give off some type of radiation all by itself." "C'est extraordinaire." "Becquerel had discovered radioactivity." "Pierre and Marie Curie, two other French scientists, were greatly intrigued by this strange phenomenon." "While seeking the source of the radiations from uranium, they discovered a new element which gave off even stronger rays." "Look!" "Our new element." "How radiant it is." "It even glows in the dark." "We should call it radium." "Radium turned out to be a mysterious source of energy." "For this remarkable element would go on radiating like an endlessly flowing spring." "This was against all laws of science known at that time." "How could this tiny mass contain so much energy?" "This mystery shook the very foundations of science." "It was finally understood in 1905, when Albert Einstein discovered an important new law." "His theory showed that every mass contains a tremendous amount of energy." "EINS TEIN:" ""E" stands for energy." ""M" for mass." "And "C-squared" is the speed of light multiplied by itself." "Now, C-squared is a very great number." "And so, if multiplied by even a small mass, the result will be a very great amount of energy." "This is a cold, scientific explanation." "But its deep meaning can be easily understood through our fable." "Einstein, like the fisherman, found that a mighty force was contained in a small vessel." "Radium constantly releases tiny bits of its energy through radiation." "A little bit every second." "And there is so much energy that this activity can go on for thousands of years." "These rays were actually tiny fragments of atoms breaking apart." "No longer could the atom be considered the smallest particle in nature." "Evidently, the atom was not an indestructible little ball after all." "But then, what was it?" "The first clue to this question came from Lord Ernest Rutherford of England." "The year was 1911." "LORD RU THERF ORD:" "Today, I used the fast-flying fragments of radium as tools to probe into the atom." "I placed a small sample of radium inside a solid lead block." "The lead absorbed all the rays except those that were allowed to escape through a small opening in the block." "One might say it was a sort of atomic gun." "To make the ray bullets visible," "I used a florescent screen." "For a target, I chose a very thin leaf of gold." "But to my surprise, the bullets from my atomic gun passed right through the gold leaf as though it wasn't there." "It was like shooting at a ghost." "This was truly amazing because the gold leaf was a solid wall 2, 000 atoms thick." "So the atom can't be as solid as we always thought." "Then, unexpectedly, one out of thousands of bullets ricocheted, striking something solid." "I can only conclude, then, the atom is mostly empty space." "Like a cloud or shell." "But occasionally, I hit something solid." "It must be very small." "A tiny particle in the center." "I shall call it the nucleus of the atom." "With Rutherford's discovery of the nucleus, scientists began to understand how nature builds her atoms." "The shell of the atom appears solid, just as a fast-whirling fan seems solid." "Actually, the shell is composed of a whirling swarm of tiny electrical particles called "electrons."" "They circle around the nucleus like planets around the sun." "So the atom is like a tiny solar system." "But scientists are ever-curious." "Like the fisherman who examined the vessel he had hauled ashore, they began to probe the atomic nucleus for its secrets." "They found that it was composed of small particles electrically charged." "They called them "protons," which means "primary particles."" "Later, to the great surprise of science, other strange particles were discovered in the nucleus." "They had no electrical charge." "They were neutral." "And so they were called "neutrons."" "At last, the mystery of the atom's structure was solved." "How amazing nature is." "Think of it." "There are countless solar systems of atomic suns and planets in everything." "There's a whole universe in the tip of a pencil." "Even in this tiny pencil dot, there are billions of times more atoms than there are people on our Earth." "There are many kinds of atoms." "It's interesting to see how they differ in the various elements." "It's a fascinating study in numbers." "Let's start with number one, the simplest atom in nature." "One proton and one electron give us the element hydrogen." "A very light gas." "Nature always keeps an electrical balance in her atoms." "So, if the nucleus has two protons, it will also have two circling electrons." "This makes an atom of helium." "There are also neutrons in the nucleus that add to its weight." "And so by simple addition, nature builds the atoms of all her elements." "Six protons and six electrons and some neutrons for carbon." "16 and 16 for sulfur." "26, iron." "47, silver." "79, gold." "92, uranium, the famous radioactive element." "Here, nature has crowded so many protons and neutrons into the nucleus that it becomes unstable." "Finally, it throws out a small fragment." "And in this way, radioactive rays are born." "These rays cannot be seen, heard, or felt." "The Geiger counter is used to detect their presence." "It gives off audible clicks when the rays pass through it." "And there's another instrument which even makes the rays visible to the naked eye." "This special device is called a cloud chamber." "It contains a tiny bit of radium, which gives off a constant shower of atomic fragments." "Of course, the fragments are much too small to be seen." "But you can now see their trails." "Each new vapor trail shows that another atom has thrown off a fragment." "Each atom does this only once in its entire life." "But there are so many atoms that this activity is going on almost endlessly." "We might say that a radioactive atom is like a set mousetrap." "Both contain energy." "The traps on this table represent the atoms in a piece of radium." "Every so often, one breaks down all by itself, releasing a bit of energy." "But radium is useless as a power source." "There aren't enough atoms releasing energy at the same time." "But nature knows all the secrets of the atom." "Since the beginning of time, she has used atomic energy to power the whole universe and to light the fires in the sky." "The best example is our own sun." "These are actual time-lapse pictures of the sun's rim." "That vast display of energy comes from an atomic fire raging deep in the core of the sun." "If this was an ordinary fire, the sun would burn to a dead heap of ashes within a few thousand years." "But so much energy is produced by these atoms that the sun will go on shining for billions of years to come." "For a long time, nature alone knew how to open the vessel that contained this mighty force." "To man, however, the vessel remained closed." "Finally, he discovered the secret of how to open the vessel himself." "The fisherman used his knife." "And man, too, found a tool that broke the seal." "The year was 1938." "The place, Berlin, Germany." "The leading character, that strange metal called uranium." "Again it turned out to be the star of a sensational scientific discovery." "Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann were probing the secrets of the uranium atom." "Like Rutherford, they used atomic bullets." "They used neutrons, the neutral particles that were discovered hidden in the nucleus of the atom." "The neutron is an ideal bullet." "Since it is neutral, it isn't deflected by the electrical charge of the atoms and flies through them in a straight course." "Finally, it struck a nucleus." "The uranium nucleus split in two." "Atomic fission had been accomplished." "But this wasn't all that happened." "Two neutrons were released from the split nucleus." "One bullet was used to split the atom." "And two new ones were created in the process." "Now we have two neutrons to split two atoms." "This implied a fabulous prospect." "A nuclear chain reaction in uranium." "Let's go back to our mousetrap atoms." "We can create a chain reaction with them." "We'll use our two Ping-Pong balls for neutrons." "They will be released when the atom splits." "All these mousetraps are the atoms that will be in the game." "They are set, loaded, and ready to go." "To start the chain reaction, all we need is one neutron." "It has to trigger just one trap." "The Ping-Pong balls that are released will set off two other traps." "And then we'll have four balls flying to trigger more traps." "You can see what is going to happen." "Watch." "An atomic chain reaction works in exactly the same way." "One neutron is enough to start it." "The atomic genie was freed." "And his devastating force posed a fearful threat." "The world was deeply shocked by the first atomic explosion." "We all wondered if atomic energy had better remained a secret forever." "We are like the fisherman." "When he first beheld the frightful form of the genie, he, too, wished that he had never found the vessel." "Know that presently thou wilt have to die!" "Heaven forbid!" "But our fable had a happy ending." "The fisherman had his means of making a friend of his enemy." "And fortunately, science has its way of doing the same thing." "An atomic blast is more than a threat." "It is also a regretful waste of heat and radiation." "To make this energy useful, the explosion must be slowed down." "Let me show you what I mean." "Our mousetrap explosion can be slowed down with the aid of a slow-motion camera." "As you can see, the chain reaction is now spread over a longer period of time." "The energy is released slowly, and the heat and radiation stay within useful limits." "Atomic scientists produce slow nuclear chain reactions within the famous atomic reactor." "It's really just a furnace with thick concrete walls to encase the atomic fire." "Blocks of uranium serve as atomic fuel." "To slow down the chain reaction, control rods that absorb neutrons are inserted in the blocks." "These rods act like a damper in the furnace and catch some of the flying neutrons and take them out of play." "This allows fewer atoms to split and keeps the reactor burning almost endlessly at an even temperature." "With the chain reaction thus under control, the mighty atom can be put to use." "The heat is picked up by a liquid that is piped through the hot core of the reactor." "The heated liquid is then run through a boiler where it produces an almost endless stream of hot steam." "Steam for power." "But there's more than heat." "The atomic reactor has the magic power to make many ordinary materials radioactive." "Lf, for example, a piece of iron is exposed to the shower of neutrons inside a reactor, the iron atoms pick up extra neutrons and become radioactive." "In this way, the reactor creates for us artificial radioactivity in many elements." "Like natural radium, they are valuable tools in science and medicine." "The atomic reactor, then, gives us a chance to make the atomic genie our friend." "He will come forth to our beckoning." "And just as in the fable, he will grant us three wishes." "The decision is ours." "What should we wish for?" "What do we need most?" "Our coal and oil will not last forever, yet we need ever more power." "So, for the growth of our civilization, our first wish shall be for power." "Here with my right hand," "I give you the magic fire of the atom." "It is yours." "The atomic fire is an almost endless source of heat." "We can use it in power stations for producing electricity." "Electric power of our modern civilization." "And then the atom will run our ships." "And, of course, the atomic submarine already exists." "The atomic fire can heat air as well as water." "Then the atom becomes the driving force of a jet engine." "It can drive an airplane." "An airplane that circles the world many times without ever landing for fuel." "And eventually the atom will help us to cast off the shackles of gravity and fly through the vast reaches of outer space." "Here we are." "Burning up our coal and oil only to produce power." "But now we have a new source of power." "Clean, silent, plentiful." "Coal and oil can now be saved for better things." "We can use them for making plastics, dyes, textiles, and drugs." "Mankind has ever suffered from hunger and disease." "So our second wish shall be for food and health." "With this hand I give you a source of beneficial rays." "They are magic tools for research that will help you to create food and to cure diseases." "Magic tools." "Indeed they are, these radioactive rays." "For example, an ordinary needle can be made radioactive." "And then if it is hidden in the proverbial haystack, it can easily be found by the rays it gives off." "Like this needle, all radioactive materials can be traced by their telltale rays." "With radioactive chemicals, we can all literally watch how plants grow, and we can trace plant nourishments from soil to fruit." "In this way, science will help to produce bigger and richer crops." "The growth of animals can be studied in the same way, and the best food can be found for better and healthier livestock." "So the atom creates more food for our ever-growing population." "And these same rays are the tools of atomic medicine." "Radioactive sodium, for example, is used for timing the flow of blood through the living human body." "It is injected into the arm, and then the Geiger counter will record how long it takes to reach the heart." "This is a great help in recognizing heart conditions." "In diseases of the thyroid gland, radioactive iodine performs an amazing job." "If mixed in an atomic cocktail, it will gather in the thyroid because iodine is attracted to this gland." "A special Geiger counter then automatically traces an accurate picture of the thyroid, showing its size and location and how fast it collects the iodine." "Radioactive elements can also heal." "Phosphorus, for example, lodges in the bones where its mild radiation can cure certain blood diseases." "The patient carries his treatment with him, even while he works and sleeps." "And then radioactive cobalt is used in the famous cobalt bomb." "But this bomb is a friendly one, one that is used in hospitals for fighting that dread disease, cancer." "And there is left to us a third and last wish." "It is an important choice." "Many legends tell of how wishers made an unwise choice and how their last wish destroyed the benefits of the first two." "The atomic genie weighs in his hands the powers of both creation and destruction." "As yet, the world has reason to fear those destructive powers." "So our last wish should simply be for the atomic genie to remain forever our friend." "We have inherited a wealth of knowledge from the great thinkers of the past." "That this heritage would ever be applied towards destruction was farthest from their minds and hearts." "It lies in our own hands to make wise use of the atomic treasures." "Then the magic touch of the genie will spread throughout the world, and he will grant the gifts of science to all mankind." "The great scientists before us gave us knowledge of the atom." "And our last wish will come true if we use the power of this knowledge in their spirit." "Then the atom will become truly our friend." "Now in motion-picture theaters everywhere, you'll be able to see for the first time" "Walt Disney's new Technicolor feature" ""Westward Ho, the Wagons!"" "It's a new and different outdoor drama telling the exciting story of the covered-wagon families finding their way west, told against a background of spectacular scenic beauty in CinemaScope and Technicolor." ""Westward Ho, the Wagons!"" "Now you and your family can see this exciting motion-picture entertainment in a theater or drive-in nearby." "Look in your newspaper for theater names and showtimes."