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The Pinch Family

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Fusion's Promise

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Summary

The first successful attempt to produce fusion reactions in the laboratory occurred in the early months of 1958 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Researchers there used strong magnetic fields to compress—or pinch—a plasma. This was the first time that humans had gotten bulk fusion reactions in a device that was not a bomb. But since the tests were classified at the time, only the people who knew understood the significance. Humanity had silently slipped into the age of controlled nuclear fusion. Even today, this event is underappreciated and undervalued and receives far too little attention in history books. In our view, it ought to be marked as a monumental accomplishment by the human race. The first device to do it was a pinch machine, and that is topic of this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fairport, NY, USA

    Matthew Moynihan

  2. Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Alfred B. Bortz

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  1. Matthew Moynihan
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Moynihan, M., Bortz, A.B. (2023). The Pinch Family. In: Fusion's Promise. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22906-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22906-0_3

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