CHICAGO — The Doomsday Clock was born in 1947 in Chicago, a Cold War baby delivered as the illustration for the first cover of a new magazine, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. It was set at 7 minutes to midnight, an indication of how close a team of revered scientists believed the world was to nuclear annihilation.
It was designed by landscape painter Martyl Suzanne Schweig Langsdorf (who went by Martyl professionally). Her husband, physicist Alexander Langsdorf Jr., was part of the team that developed the atomic bomb at the University of Chicago and was among the founders of the magazine.
The world has changed since and the clock along with it. First named the Atomic Cock, it became Doomsday. In more recent years, it has gone beyond bombs to be recalibrated annually due to climate change, biological dangers, artificial intelligence, the spread of disinformation and remains ever aware of new emerging issues that might threaten the planet.
From that original 7 minutes to midnight, its time has varied over the years and now sits alarmingly at 100 seconds to midnight. Its time is announced formally each January and over the decades has become so much more.
As described in a spectacular new book, “The Doomsday Clock at 75,” by Robert K. Elder and J.C. Gabel, the clock “is many things all at once: it’s a logo, it’s a brand, and it’s one of the most recognizable symbols in the past 100 years.”
That it is. And it is revelatory to see and learn how it has worked its way into the cultural landscape.
This enlightening and frighteningly entertaining book has been compiled and much of it written by a couple of prolific literary figures.
Elder is a former Tribune writer who since leaving the paper a decade ago has held some interesting positions in the publishing and digital world. All the while he has exercised his curiosity by researching and writing almost 20 books, including “Last Words of the Executed,” about the final statements of some very bad people; the self-explanatory and surprising “Christmas with Elvis,” and “Hemingway in Comics.” His is a marvelously eclectic output.
A few years ago, he became the chief digital officer for the Bulletin and immediately realized, as he told me, “that this international symbol that was born right here in Chicago,” he said. “That appealed to me and I wanted to tell the story behind the clock. It was born out of anxiety about the fate of humanity. By its nature, it’s meant to spark debate and awareness about things that can wipe humanity off the map.”
Gabel, having spent his formative years here, was once a frenetic force on the local literary scene. Many of you may remember his magazine. It was called Stop Smiling, first created as a zine when he was a student at Columbia College and reborn some years later as a relatively lavish, as he billed it, a “magazine for high-minded lowlifes.”
He would later, in 2012, publish a magazine called The Chicagoan, which he told me then was to be devoted to “the arts, culture, innovators and the history of Chicago and the greater Midwest.” It was fat at nearly 200 pages and expensive at $19.95. But it delivered some stunning stuff. I can still recall its “Enemies, A Love Story,” detailing the relationship between Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, by Josh Schollmeyer. I called it a “compelling and revelatory oral history.”
For the last decade, Gabel and his wife, Sybil Perez, have been in Los Angeles, working as editors for publishers such as Taschen and Chronicle, and having a baby. He later started his own company, Hat & Beard Press, and began to issue lavishly designed and illustrated and distinctive books.
He and Elder are longtime pals. With Elder working at the Bulletin, he and Gabel started talking seriously about what became this book.
Gabel had a strong connection to the story, having some years ago traveled to meet Martyl as part of research for a magazine piece.
He sat with her at her home in Schaumburg, a famous home designed and built by architect Paul Schweikher; the house has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1987 and is open for tours.
There she told Gabel that the clock “has a life of its own now.”
He also noted that at the time of her death in 2013 at 96 years of age, “more people knew her for the clock than for her eight decades of painting as a fine artist.” She emerges in Gabel’s story as a grand and charming talent.
There are other compelling sections of the book: Rachel Bronson, the president and CEO of the Bulletin, provides a helpful historical piece, writing, “The Bulletin was founded by scientists who foresaw the promise and peril of all science has to offer.” She also offers hope, writing that the clock “challenges us to remember that we have the ability to reduce these seemingly insurmountable threats.”
There is a section on the clock’s appearance in editorial cartoons; about how such musical groups as The Who, The Clash, Pink Floyd, Smashing Pumpkins and others have incorporated the clock into their songs; how it’s been brought up by late-nighters like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, who said in 2016, “We can all do something to reduce tensions and help move the clock back next year”; how the clock has popped up in books, movies, comics and on T-shirts.
The book’s design is at once eye-popping, stylish and arresting. It is the work of James Goggin.
My colleague Ron Grossman wrote a fine story about the clock earlier this year, in advance of the Jan. 22 announcement of its new time.
Elder has moved on, since May he has been the president and CEO of the Outrider Foundation, an organization that is devoted to nuclear issues, climate change and voter rights. Gabel continues to run Hat & Beard Press. The clock itself is housed near the bulletin’s offices at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. And the world continues to spin, in its ever precarious and often unsettling way.
