Doomsday Clock, frequently positioned at a time close to midnight
Its first representation was in 1947, when bulletin co-founder Hyman Goldsmith asked artist Martyl Langsdorf (wife of Manhattan Project research associate and Szilárd petition signatory Alexander Langsdorf, Jr.) to design a cover for the magazine's June 1947 issue.
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In January, 2007, designer Michael Bierut, who serves on the Bulletin's Governing Board, redesigned the Clock to give it a more modern feel.
Martyl Suzanne Schweig Langsdorf (March 16, 1917 – March 26, 2013) was an American artist who created the Doomsday Clock image for the June 1947 cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
His alarm clock reads 11:55, the then Doomsday Clock time, referencing the album title Minutes to Midnight and the song which is the 5th song on the album.
Twelve O'Clock High | Doomsday Book | 12-hour clock | clock | Twelve O'Clock High (TV series) | The Doomsday Scenario | Not the Nine O'Clock News | Doomsday Clock | CLOCK | My Grandfather's Clock | The 11 O'Clock Show | Doomsday | BBC Nine O'Clock News | Twist Around the Clock | The Elephant Man's Alarm Clock | Rock Around the Clock | One O'Clock Lab Band | Not the Nine O'clock News | Nine O'Clock News | Clock Tower | Clock of the Long Now | Clock | 24-hour clock | The Devil at 4 O'Clock | Swiss railway clock | Six O'Clock Rock | One O'Clock Jump | Jens Olsen's World Clock | It's Five O'Clock Somewhere | Doomsday Preppers |
He helped found Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and his wife Martyl Langsdorf designed the 1947 cover of the publication which debuted the Doomsday Clock.
With the line "It's 55 minutes past 11..." the song directly reference the Minutes to Midnight Doomsday Clock which was established and maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago, which denotes by just how few minutes it is to midnight to what the impending threat of just how close the world is estimated to be to a global disaster, and it also includes a rejection of dead-end jobs ("who gives you work and why should you do it?").