The History of the Bulletin Clock

For nearly 55 years, the Bulletin clock (a.k.a. the “Doomsday Clock”) has been the world’s most recognizable symbol of nuclear danger. The first representation of the clock was produced in 1947, when artist Martyl Langsdorf, the wife of a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, was asked by magazine co-founder Hyman Goldsmith to design a cover for the June issue.

After discarding several ideas, Martyl hit upon “the idea of using a clock to symbolize urgency”; her plan was to repeat the image every month on a different background color. To visualize what it would look like, she drew her first sketch—of the upper left quadrant of a clock face, with the minute hand approaching midnight—on the back cover of a bound volume of Beethoven sonatas.

This simple design captured readers’ imaginations, evoking both the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of military attack—the countdown to zero hour.

While Martyl intended the clock image as a whole to convey a sense of imminent danger, placing the minute hand at seven minutes to midnight was a matter of “good design.” The idea of moving the minute hand came later, in 1949, as a way to dramatize the magazine’s response to world events.

While the clock is no longer the main illustration on the Bulletin cover, it remains an integral part of the magazine’s logo. The original design has been modified over the years and was completely redesigned in 1989 to emphasize the magazine’s global focus.

Since the Cold War, many people believe the clock has lost its apocalyptic meaning; today movements of the hand may seem more ambiguous. But the movement of the hand, forward or back, nonetheless reflects a changing perception of the danger of catastrophic events.

Overview

1947 | Seven minutes to midnight
The clock first appears on the Bulletin cover as a symbol of nuclear danger.

1949 | Three minutes to midnight
The Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb.

1953 | Two minutes to midnight
The United States and the Soviet Union test thermonuclear devices within nine months of one another.

1960 | Seven minutes to midnight
The clock moves in response to the growing public understanding that nuclear weapons made war between the major powers irrational. International
scientific cooperation and efforts to aid poor nations are cited.

1963 | Twelve minutes to midnight
The U.S. and Soviet signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty “provides the first tangible confirmation of what has been the Bulletin’s conviction in recent years—that a new cohesive force has entered the interplay of forces shaping the fate of mankind.”

1968 | Seven minutes to midnight
China acquires nuclear weapons; wars rage in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and Vietnam; world military spending increases while development funds shrink.

1969 | Ten minutes to midnight
The U.S. Senate ratifies the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

1972 | Twelve minutes to midnight
The United States and the Soviet Union sign the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; progress toward SALT II is anticipated.

1974 | Nine minutes to midnight
SALT talks reach an impasse; India develops a nuclear weapon. “We find policy-makers on both sides increasingly ensnared, frustrated, and neutralized by domestic forces having a vested interest in the amassing of strategic forces.”

1980 | Seven minutes to midnight
The deadlock in U.S.-Soviet arms talks continues; nationalistic wars and terrorist actions increase; the gulf between rich and poor nations grows wider.

1981| Four minutes to midnight
Both superpowers develop more weapons for fighting a nuclear war. Terrorist actions, repression of human rights, and conflicts in Afghanistan, Poland, and South Africa add to world tension.

1984 | Three minutes to midnight
The arms race accelerates. “Arms control negotiations have been reduced to a species of propaganda. . . . The blunt simplicities of force threaten to displace any other form of discourse between the superpowers.”

1988 | Six minutes to midnight
The United States and the Soviet Union sign a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF); superpower relations improve; more nations actively oppose nuclear weapons.

1990 | Ten minutes to midnight
The clock, redesigned in 1989, reflects democratic movements in Eastern Europe, which shatter the myth of monolithic communism; the Cold War ends.

1991 | Seventeen minutes to midnight
The United States and the Soviet Union sign the long-stalled Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and announce further unilateral cuts in tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.

1995 | Fourteen minutes to midnight
Further arms reductions are stalled while global military spending continues at Cold War levels. Nuclear “leakage” from poorly guarded former Soviet facilities is recognized as a growing risk.

1998 | Nine minutes to midnight
India and Pakistan “go public” with nuclear tests. The United States and Russia can’t agree on further deep reductions in their stockpiles.

2002 | Seven minutes to midnight
Little progress is made on global nuclear disarmament. The United States rejects a series of arms control treaties and announces it will withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Terrorists seek to acquire and use nuclear and biological weapons.