1. John Coster-Mullen was an American industrial photographer, truck driver and nuclear archaeologist who played an important role in creating a public record of the design of the first atomic bombs.
12 Facts About John Coster-Mullen
1. 2.
John Coster-Mullen is known for his critically-acclaimed self-published book Atom Bombs: The Top Secret, Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man.
3.
John Coster-Mullen became interested in nuclear weapons when he was in the seventh grade and the first pictures of the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs were released.
4.
John Coster-Mullen dropped out in his junior year and instead became an industrial photographer.
5.
In 1993, with the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki approaching, John Coster-Mullen decided that he could earn some money creating models of the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs and selling them online or through hobby shops.
6.
Some companies were already making them, but John Coster-Mullen noticed that their models contained small errors, and he believed that he could do a better job.
7.
John Coster-Mullen began collecting all the material he could about their design.
8.
Thereafter, John Coster-Mullen regularly attended reunions of the 509th Composite Group.
9.
John Coster-Mullen never sold a model, but the brochure that he intended to include with the models gradually grew into a 431-page book, Atom Bombs: The Top Secret, Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man, as he gradually pieced together an unusually detailed account of how the weapons were built, assembled, and deployed.
10.
In 2003, he helped American sculptor Jim Sanborn with his installation "Critical Assembly" at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, at which, according to Sanborn, John Coster-Mullen's work started to get attention from the government.
11.
John Coster-Mullen was an advisor to the National Atomic Museum, the Children of the Manhattan Project Preservation Association and the British Broadcasting Corporation, which used his work for a documentary.
12.
John Coster-Mullen's papers are in the Harry S Truman Presidential Library and Museum.