On July 16, 1945, just before half past five in the morning, the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, was transformed for a moment into a blazing furnace the likes of which the world had never seen. The Trinity test, the first detonation of an atomic bomb, vaporized the steel tower and its wiring, tore sand, asphalt and measuring instruments into the sky in a massive fireball and sent it all falling back to the desert floor in a glassy mass.
