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We turned the switch, saw the flashes, watched for ten minutes, then switched everything off and went home. That night I knew the world was headed for sorrow.

1939 After an early experiment at Columbia University which proved the possibility of splitting the atom. Quoted in James B Simpson Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988).
We turned the switch, saw the flashes, watched for ten minutes, then switched everything off and went home. That night I knew the world was headed for sorrow.