US atomic-age posters, cartoons and front pages, 1945–1969

This gallery collects 35 records from the FRAME snapshot, dated 1945 to 1969, in which the atom is the subject or a captioned item: two front pages from the day after Hiroshima, the 1950 civil defense booklet, 22 U.S. Information Agency sheets for audiences abroad, nine Jim Berryman cartoons and the 1964 "Daisy" spot. Cards run in date order.

The grid has four kinds of speaker, and the card does not always say which one is talking, so here is the key. The federal government at home speaks once, on the cover of Survival Under Atomic Attack. The U.S. Information Agency and its State Department predecessors speak 22 times, to readers in Beirut, Damascus, Manila, Dacca, Tehran, Rangoon, Taipei, San Salvador and elsewhere, mostly about the peaceful atom. Private newspapers speak eleven times: the Washington Evening Star and the Atlanta Daily World on 7 August 1945, and nine cartoons Jim Berryman drew for the Star between 1953 and 1963. A presidential campaign speaks once, in the 1964 "Daisy" spot.

The agency sheets were chosen because the atom is their subject or a captioned item on them. Some are whole campaigns, such as the six-page Atoms for Peace set from 1956 and the exhibition posters from Beirut and Damascus. Others are picture-news sheets where one item among several is an atomic power plant, a research garden, or a prize. FRAME classes 17 of the 22 agency sheets as blurred, meaning the sheet does not show the American government behind it, and 5 as openly sourced. The newspapers, the cartoons, the booklet and the campaign spot all carry their makers' names.

Where this site has an essay, the card opens it. Otherwise it opens the FRAME record. If the line under the title says "no primary id in the snapshot," the record gives no NARA number, and none is supplied here. Translations quoted on the essay pages are FRAME's machine renderings. Headlines on both 1945 front pages use the wartime slur for Japanese people; the card titles are the archive's catalog titles, and the essay pages quote the headlines as printed.

The snapshot holds no record of the Duck and Cover film or its turtle, of CONELRAD broadcast notices, of fallout-shelter signs, or of government announcements about weapons tests, so none appears here. The parent page is Civil defense and the atomic age in US messaging, 1945–1969.