Most of us are familiar with the tragic case of scientist Louis Slotin, whose name is most associated with this phrase.
However, the question I have is “Was the a phrase that was coined for this type of experiment, or did it predate them?”
(It’s easy to see the metaphor. I’m not questioning that–only the dating of the phrase.)
Um … we are? I’m fairly well-read, and the use of clever turns of phrase is how I make my living (or was until the magazine closed), but I can’t say I’ve ever heard of the phrase, much less the person with whom you associate it.
I offer a little background info but no answer to the OP.
A somewhat more detailed account, which doesn’t address the etymology issue:
http://collections.ic.gc.ca/heirloom_series/volume6/252-255.htm
I thought I remembered Richard Feynman inventing the phrase, see ‘Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman’, or maybe R. Rhodes attributed it to him in ‘The making of the atomic bomb’.
However, I did a search on Feynman and “tickling the dragon” and got another hit, in an article on flutter in airplanes. So perhaps it has an earlier etymology meaning ‘a kind of risky experiment’
http://www.airspacemag.com/ASM/Mag/Index/2001/FM/Hammer.html
Cool (well, not really, it was a horrible way to die), I’d always wondered if that scene from Fat Man and Little Boy was based on an actual event.
–sublight.
Now I’m curious as to whether his gravesite is radioactive enough to affect groundwater, etc? A serious question.
Maybe I can answer my own question:
from here
Hmmm, the statement about the body makes me wonder if Heinlein was inspired by the accounts of this incident when he wrote “The Long Watch”.
If the body was that radioactive, where did he live for his last nine days without exposing his family?
Not quite the same, or relevant, really, but I figured I’d share knowledge of a similar phrase used in WWI.
In the British raid on the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, the commander, Vice Admiral Roger Keyes was informed that the date of the raid would be St. George’s Day (Apr. 23rd). So he had his ship signal the other ships the message “St. George for England.” The message recieved from one of the ships was “may we give the dragon’s tail a damn fine twist.” A while later, one of the officers involved wrote an account of the raid titled How We Twisted the Dragon’s Tail. It’s one of relatively few books on the raid that I’ve never been able to find a copy of.
Of course, that says nothing about tickling, but does perhaps provide some info that could be of use.
Oh, and he was not, AFAIK, with his family for the last nine days, but at a military hospital, presumably with adequate care being taken by the staff.
As for the movie, it puts the event at the Manhattan Project, but it didn’t happen until well afterwards, 1949, IIRC.