Edward Teller - Two typewriters and a mirror (3/147)

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Hungarian-American physicist, Edward Teller (1908-2003), helped to develop the atomic bomb and provided the theoretical framework for the hydrogen bomb. He remained a staunch advocate of nuclear power, calling for the development of advanced thermonuclear weapons. [Listener: John H. Nuckolls]
TRANSCRIPT: Of those years, till the end of the war, I remember my father was beyond the age that he had to join. He was a lawyer, and some of the people working in his office did have to join the army. So I began to hear not so nice things about the way this glorious fighting was going on. I also remember my father's office. The really interesting things in that were two typewriters. That was the first complicated machinery that attracted me and that attraction was, of course, met by a strict denial - I shouldn't touch them. That may have something to do with the circumstance that I did not become an experimental physicist. Another story of the same kind was my father brought home one day an extremely interesting toy, that was a mirror. And as the sun came in I could reflect the sun and throw it on various parts of the ceiling and, unfortunately, also out of the window. Now, at that time, you know, we had, had quarters just behind the Supreme Court.