[Atomic energy].

A compilation of six audio cuts:

1. American scientist and Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling, comments on the need for safeguards in the use of atomic power and supports the calls by Albert Einstein for a ban on atomic weapons. He talks about the discovery of the damage radiation causes, as fall-out after an atomic bomb. He predicts a growth in deaths from leukaemia and cancer as a result. He talks about his petition presented to the United Nations signed by 12,000 leading scientists worldwide. He discusses the debate among scientists about the level of threat fall-out poses. He discusses the immorality of nuclear weapons testing and negotiations in Geneva to stop testing. He is optimistic about the end of testing and war itself.

2. The sounds of a manual telephone exchange, recorded in Invercargill. Male and female operators asking "Number, please" repeating numbers and then putting calls through.

3. An interview with Mr Fred Hall-Jones, Southland regional chairman of the Historic Places Trust, about the Southland Historical Committee which began 23 years ago, putting up plaques marking historic places in the province. The first was at Te Anau, noting the first visit by two pakeha, which is still on a tree at Blue Gum Point.

4. A male interviewer speaks with an unidentified woman who was a telephone operator in the early days of the telephone service in Southland around 1910. She recalls when she began working there were 380 subscribers, but most were businesses and government offices. in the evenings when it was quieter, the female operators were allowed to do their 'fancy work." She describes the dress and hairstyles of the operators, with ankle-length skirts and high-necked blouses and "Giisbon Girl' style hair-dos.
He then interviews Mr Hisham (?) about the problem of the many tangled Invercargill telephone lines in the early days. He recalls a linesman Peter Smith, whose job was to go with a clothes prop to untangle lines in Dee Street. Then Mr Collier, former linesmen, talks about his work putting up the first telephone poles and lines around Central Otago. He began work in 1920, digging all the pole holes by hand and camping out.He then interviews Mr Collier, a former linesman, about his work in the same era, putting up the first telephone poles and lines around Southland.

5. An unidentified broadcaster introduces speeches made at the ceremony for the naming and departure of TEAL's first Lockheed Electra trans-Tasman aircraft, at Whenuapai Airport. Speeches given by Mr. Keith Buttle, the mayor of Auckland, and Mr. J. Mathison, the Minister of Civil Aviation, who predicts growth in tourists visiting New Zealand from Australia. Mrs Mathison then names the new airliner "Aotearoa" and breaks the traditional bottle of champagne across it. The first mailbag to be carried across the Tasman by the new service is handed over to Captain John McGrain (?) and once passengers have boarded the sound of the "Aotearoa" departing is heard. Recorded December 1, 1959.

6. A recording of a broadcast (via shortwave radio) of an interview with Harold MacMillan, speaking after the Labour Party had conceded victory in the British elections in 1959. (Cheering crowds can be heard in the background.)