During the first United States nuclear test on 16 July 1945 , electronic equipment was shielded because Enrico Fermi expected the electromagnetic pulse . The official technical history for that first nuclear test states , " All signal lines were completely shielded , in many cases doubly shielded . In spite of this many records were lost because of spurious pickup at the time of the explosion that paralyzed the recording equipment . " During British nuclear testing in 1952 – 1953 , instrumentation failures were attributed to " radioflash " , which was their term for EMP
first United States nuclear test
Trinity (nuclear test)
Nuclear electromagnetic pulse