Ivy Mike

Ivy Mike was the United States’ first full-scale thermonuclear device test, detonated at Enewetak Atoll on November 1, 1952. Its cryogenic liquid-deuterium fuel made it a proof of principle rather than a practical weapon.

Teller–Ulam design: A staged thermonuclear weapon design that uses radiation from a primary explosion to compress and ignite a secondary. Ivy Mike tested the essential radiation-driven staging principle associated with this design.
Manhattan Project: The United States-led wartime program that developed the first nuclear weapons. Its fission weapons and scientific institutions supplied the technical starting point for thermonuclear work.
Edward Teller: A Hungarian-born American theoretical physicist who advocated development of thermonuclear weapons. Teller persistently promoted the Super program that led to Mike.
Ivy King: A 1952 United States nuclear test at Enewetak that detonated a large fission bomb without a fusion stage. It contrasted with Mike by testing extreme fission yield rather than thermonuclear staging.
Mike device: The cryogenic thermonuclear device detonated by the United States at Enewetak on November 1, 1952. This is the specific experimental apparatus whose operation defined Ivy Mike.
Teller–Ulam configuration: The arrangement of primary and secondary stages that enables radiation implosion in a thermonuclear weapon. The test’s success depended on coupling its fission primary to a compressed fusion secondary.
Super: An early proposed thermonuclear weapon concept, debated by physicists during and after World War II. The long-running effort to make the Super preceded Mike’s staged design.
Stanislaw Ulam: A Polish-American mathematician whose work helped establish the staged approach to thermonuclear weapons. Ulam’s compression insight helped make a workable design possible.
Castle Bravo: A 1954 United States thermonuclear test at Bikini Atoll whose unexpectedly high yield caused severe radioactive fallout. Bravo followed Mike with a far more weapon-like solid-fuel design and major fallout consequences.
Elugelab: A small island in Enewetak Atoll vaporized by the Ivy Mike detonation. The blast erased the island where the device was installed.

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