Automatic Camera situated 7 miles from blast with 10 foot lens. Shutter speed equaled 1/100,000,000 of-a-second exposure. Joshua tree's near base get vaporized in just microseconds.
That's 1/10,000 of-a-second, please! The confusion probably comes from someone, at some point, saying "a hundred millionths of a second" and someone else hearing "a hundred millionth of a second", something else entirely! Edgerton's shutter was most likely a "curtain shutter" - a narrow slit in a piece of lightweight material. To achieve a 10-nanosecond exposure the shutter would have to be moving at something like 10 km/sec -- which is Earth's escape speed! Not likely.
Good catch, Zowie - I must admit, I quoted the website directly on that and had no idea on what the shutter speed equivalent of taking a blast 7 miles away with a 10 foot lens.
I believe that the 1/100,000,000 is fairly accurate. I will be looking in to this to see how it was done. You have to remember it was an atomic bomb. This is a series of three photographs.
Wait - 10 foot lens? They *make* that?
http://www.rapidnewswire.com/atom.htm
http://simplethinking.com/home/rapatronic_photographs.htm