It was a TL 6 age. In a highly funded government laboratory, the best and brightest that a nation had to offer invented a TL 7 device; it was big and crude compared to the devices that came later, but it was a nuclear bomb.
Those scientists, with their Physics/TL6, had to soak up the penalty for trying to invent a TL 7 device, and they did it. Once it had been demonstrated that these crazy theories worked, people started improving their Physics/TL7 from default, and Engineering/TL7 soon followed.
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Originally Posted by maximara
We are not going into that level of detail but the important thing is to realize that one innovation of TLy does not dump everything else into TLy. Remember that until they actually set the Gadget off the scientists were not sure what the thing was going to do. Edward Teller thought intially that it would set the atmosphere ablaze (an idea revived for the Alpha-Omega bomb in Beneath the Planet of the Apes) and Oppenheimer had plans to evacuate the southwest part New Mexico. Even after they set the Gadget there really did not understand what an atom bomb could do because moments after the test they were poking around in the still hot remnents.
So the Gadget, Little Boy, and Fat Man were more on the order of TL(6+1) than true TL7 ie a TL7 invention made with TL6 understanding. The previously mentioned movie Atomic Cafe is made up of clips and promotions of the 1950s and shows the total lack of understanding we had of atomic energy in general and atom bomb in particular. The scene where the army chaplin is saying "it (the bomb going off) is a beutiful thing to behold" while the army is marching is troops through fallout is case in point. Then you have Bert the Turtle and his advice 'When you see the flash - duck and cover' which was lampooned decades later in Bloom County as 'When you see the flash bend over and kiss your butt goodbye'. A&E's The Future that Never Happened showed an army training from c1950 where they are talking about using tactical nuclear weapons as if they were just a bigger artilery round.
The fact of the matter is the first years of the atomic age were more TL(6+1) than 'true' TL7.
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