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Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Atomic Hollywood

This is one of my favorite cards - an oversized view of the General Atomics facility near San Diego, California, made much more interesting by the note written on the back recounting a celebrity party attended by the writer, an AEC employee in the late 1950s.  General Atomic was then a division of General Dynamics and the developer of the Triga reactor.  The picture is of the John Jay Hopkins laboratory.


The card's reverse has a note sent to Jo Sobel in D.C. from "Jeannine", both apparently AEC employees in 1957 when the card is postmarked.  Jeannine recounts some off the job adventures, including a visit to the local track in Del Mar and going to a party at the Turf Club.  She writes, "Never did I think that I would be rubbing shoulders with the Hollywood crowd, such as Victor Mature, Jimmy Durante, Betty Grable & Harry James (they had a horse running in the sixth) Lucy Ball & Desi Arnaz, Hoagy Carmichael & Arthur Godfrey who happened to be in town." Jeannine also notes the move of the AEC to Germantown, Maryland, where the Department of Energy (successor to the promotional side of the AEC) still has facilities.


I picked up this card off eBay from a woman who was apologetic for its condition, but I've never seen it elsewhere.  For a number of years, the NRC worked to get the spent fuel from the facility moved to storage with DOE, something we were able to finally accomplish in 2010.

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