Harold Edgerton - an MIT physicist and a photographer - is best known for his invention of strobe light photography, allowing us to freeze fast actions in time, as in the famous picture of a bullet piercing an apple. In the beginning of 1947, Harold's research firm was commissioned to photograph atomic bomb tests in Nevada and the Pacific. This particular photograph was taken on June 5, 1952, as part of Operation Tumbler-Snapper test series at the Nevada Proving Grounds with a shutter speed of one hundred millionth of a second.