History of the infamous "Daisy" H-bomb commercial

Ken says:

On the 43rd anniversary of its first broadcast on NBC's Monday Night at the Movies (1964) CONELRAD has published a complete history of the infamous and iconic Daisy Ad. Bill Geerhart spent the last year researching the story and documenting its disputed authorship.
In addition to the collected video, audio, and historical documents, Bill interviewed the 'Daisy Girl' Birgitte Olsen. As a bonus we've posted video of 'Fighting Words' -- a 1951 military training film about propaganda starring James Gregory. Enjoy!

Link

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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bb reader

Interesting link. That commercial is surreal. I was curious about what bomb footage they used. I skimmed through the copy but didn’t see any references. Not sure its an H-bomb.

Thanks!
Robbo

Reading that was like watching an episode of “Mad Men” whilst experiencing a very good acid flashback.

Tony Schwartz’s book “The Responsive Chord” is essential reading for ANYONE working in the television industry. It was a bible for anyone who looked to use the medium to influence – from educators to marketers. What Walter Murch was to sound & cinema so too was Schwartz to audio & video, and his understanding of how video is “sound to the eyes” fed a lot of McLuhan’s insights.

How this affects the ability of the current user-generated age of media I have no frickin’ idea – but I’m digging out my copy of “The Chord” to refresh my mind and see what sticks. Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where a single 30 second media event could have such a profound change? Of course, Schwartz’s insights were agnostic to ideology so maybe it’s not such a good thing after all.

Cheers.
PT

BB READER, you’re right, that’s not an H-bomb. It’s a Nevada test of a small fission bomb, a few kT. The opening shot is from a suicidal distance, less than 2 miles away. The wider shot it shows the mushroom cloud rising off to the right of the fireball, which is a bit unusual, and six telemetry rockets. DoE has an online photo archive – http://www.nv.doe.gov/library/photos/default.htm – but I couldn’t find one quite like it. My guess is it’s probably Tumbler-Snapper series F or H, because those were open to the press – most others would have been still classified in the 1960s.
Deb Geisler

Every time I show this ad in a class (usually Persuasion or Political Communication), my students are gobsmacked by the heavy-handedness of it.

Then we look at some more modern ads…