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The first issue of the Bulletin -- then called the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago -- was a six-page newsletter dated December 10, 1945. That was 50 years ago, a long span for the publishing business, a I field with a high mortality rate. But then, the Bulletin was never quite in the "publishing business." It was not founded, as most magazines are, to turn a profit. It was started -- and I don't know how to make this sound less grandiose -- to save the world.
That sounds a little mad, I know, bringing to mind New Yorker-cartoon images of scruffy characters bearing signs reading, "Repent Now -- the End is Near." The founders of the Bulletin. carried no signs, they were not scruffy, and they were assuredly not mad. They were calm, rational, logical. They spoke not of saving the world but of educating "the public to a full understanding of the scientific, technological, and social problems arising from the...